By Darius A. Lecointe, PhD, JD
I. The Principle We Forgot
Every constitution presupposes a people who already know who they are.
That is the principle America forgot.
The Republic of San Marino, founded by Christians fleeing Diocletian’s persecution, demonstrates this truth vividly. Its founders formed a moral community before establishing any government. Their shared conscience became their constitution.
By contrast, America’s early settlers — Englishmen fleeing persecution and others seeking profit — defined themselves through royal charters and colonial licenses. Their identity was borrowed, not born. And when the time came to sever ties with the Crown, they still sought validation from authority rather than conscience.
“Identity before governance” is not an idealistic phrase—it is the essential sequence that gives constitutional order its strength. When the sequence is reversed, power supplants principle, and government becomes self-justifying.
II. From Charter to Covenant
The Puritans who sought freedom of worship in Massachusetts still asked for the King’s permission to exercise it. The Virginians who pursued fortune in Jamestown did the same. Each believed their purpose needed royal sanction.
This dependence was carried into the American founding. Independence from Great Britain was achieved politically, not philosophically. The Declaration proclaimed liberty, but the habits of dependence lingered.
That is why Marbury v. Madison was not the birth of judicial review — it was an attempt at moral correction. Chief Justice Marshall reminded the government that the Constitution’s supremacy is not the Court’s power but the people’s conscience.
His opinion’s is the most overlooked civics lesson in American history. Marshall teaches that a government “of laws, and not of men” requires self-examination at every level. No branch may act beyond constitutional bounds—not because the Court says so, but because the Constitution itself forbids it.
III. The Great Reversal
Unfortunately, America read Marbury backward.
The doctrine of voidness — that acts repugnant to the Constitution are null — was transformed into a doctrine of judicial supremacy. The people traded their birthright of fidelity for the comfort of interpretation.
That reversal explains our current constitutional confusion. We treat crises as matters for litigation rather than education. We ask the courts to fix what civic conscience refuses to confront.
In San Marino, the people never surrendered their conscience to a higher institution. Their survival across seventeen centuries proves that fidelity, not force, sustains constitutional life. Theirs is not a republic of courts but of conviction.
IV. The Marbury Message
Marshall’s genius lies not in asserting the Court’s authority but in reminding the nation of its responsibility. Marbury is not a monument to judicial power; it is a mirror held up to the Republic.
To understand Marshall’s intent, one must read his opinion as an act of civic pedagogy. He used the form of a judicial opinion to teach the people the substance of self-government. The Constitution, he implied, is not a text awaiting interpretation but a covenant awaiting faithfulness.
When we reduce constitutional fidelity to compliance with rulings, we lose sight of the fact that every citizen who takes the Oath of Allegiance becomes part of the Constitution’s living identity.
V. The Path to Renewal
Renewal begins with remembrance. Before we can restore constitutional order, we must recover constitutional identity.
We must teach that fidelity is not a judicial function — it is a civic duty. The Constitution does not enforce itself; it educates us into obedience. Each branch of government, each citizen under oath, must rediscover the sequence that San Marino preserved and Marshall understood:
Identity before governance. Conscience before command. Fidelity before force.
Only then will the Constitution cease to be a legal instrument and become again what it was meant to be: the living record of a people faithful to themselves.
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#America250 #ConstitutionalFidelity #MarburyvMadison #RuleOfConscience #HydraulicConstitutionalForce #CivicEducation #SanMarino #FoundingLessons
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