§ Message № government-of-laws · Courts Lens

A Government of Laws.

...to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

John Adams, Massachusetts Constitution · 1780

A Government of Laws., Quorum

Adams's phrase.

John Adams wrote it into the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: a government of laws, and not of men. It is the rule-of-law idea given its most quoted American sentence, seven years before the federal Constitution.

Why both exist in the lens.

Quorum runs "Rule of Law" and "A Government of Laws" as a pair, the principle and the historic American phrasing of it. One is the term, one is the sentence the founders actually wrote.

How we set it.

Fraunces, measured, "Laws" in the soft italic. Set like a line from a constitutional preamble, because that is what it is.