Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
9-2026
Abstract
In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a pamphlet that galvanized American public opinion in the aftermath of the colonial confrontations at Lexington and Concord. The disorganized revolt against British authority was largely undecided on next steps, public opinion having failed to coalesce around capitulation to London or revolution against the British government. Paine’s argument for American independence was uncompromising. Prefiguring the Declaration of Independence that put King George III front and center in the emerging conflict, Paine wrote: “In the monarchies, the King is the Law but in America, Law is King.”
Disciplines
Constitutional Law | Jurisprudence | Law
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Philip C. Bobbitt,
The Health Status of U.S. Democracy,
Democracy's Challenges: 100 Ideas, Bob Bauer, Richard Pildes, Rosa Po & Samuel Issacharoff (Eds.), NYU Press
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4880
Comments
File includes extracted endnotes (p. 471).