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8 

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

id.,  §97,  at  49.  Upon  consenting  to  that  order,  men  ob-
tained  civil  liberty,  or  the  freedom  “to  be  under  no  other 
legislative  power  but  that  established  by  consent  in  the
commonwealth;  nor  under  the  dominion  of  any  will  or 
restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact 
according to the trust put in it.”  Id., §22, at 13.4 

This  philosophy  permeated  the  18th-century  political
scene in America.  A 1756 editorial in the Boston Gazette, 
for example, declared that “Liberty in the State of Nature” 
was the “inherent natural Right” “of each Man” “to make a
free  Use  of  his  Reason  and  Understanding,  and  to  chuse 
that Action which he thinks he can give the best Account 
of,”  but  that,  “in  Society,  every  Man  parts  with  a  Small 
Share  of  his  natural  Liberty,  or  lodges  it  in  the  publick 
Stock,  that  he  may  possess  the  Remainder  without  Con-
troul.”  Boston Gazette and Country Journal, No. 58, May 
10,  1756,  p.  1.  Similar  sentiments  were  expressed  in
public speeches, sermons, and letters of the time.  See 1 C. 

—————— 

4 Locke’s  theories  heavily  influenced  other  prominent  writers  of  the 
17th  and  18th  centuries.    Blackstone,  for  one,  agreed  that  “natural
liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without 
any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature” and described civil 
liberty  as  that  “which  leaves  the  subject  entire  master  of  his  own 
conduct,” except as “restrained by human laws.”  1 Blackstone 121–122. 
And in a “treatise routinely cited by the Founders,” Zivotofsky v. Kerry, 
ante, at 5 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in
part),  Thomas  Rutherforth  wrote,  “By  liberty  we  mean  the  power,
which a man has to act as he thinks fit, where no law restrains him; it 
may therefore be called a mans right over his own actions.”  1 T. Ruth-
erforth,  Institutes  of  Natural  Law  146  (1754).    Rutherforth  explained 
that  “[t]he  only  restraint,  which  a  mans  right  over  his  own  actions  is
originally  under,  is  the  obligation  of  governing  himself  by  the  law  of
nature,  and  the  law  of  God,”  and  that  “[w]hatever  right  those  of  our
own  species  may  have  . . .  to  restrain  [those  actions]  within  certain
bounds,  beyond  what  the  law  of  nature  has  prescribed,  arises  from 
some after-act of our own, from some consent either express or tacit, by
which we have alienated our liberty, or transferred the right of direct-
ing our actions from ourselves to them.”  Id., at 147–148.