Justice & Law Quote by William Blackstone

Blackstone’s line is less a pious aside than a jurisdictional power move: it tells legislators that they don’t get the last word. In an 18th-century Britain where Parliament was flexing as the engine of modern government, he plants a quiet landmine under pure parliamentary supremacy. “Enactment of man” sounds neutral, even faintly dismissive, as if statutes are merely paperwork unless they answer to a higher court. The sentence works because it borrows the calm voice of legal definition while smuggling in a theological veto.

The specific intent is to anchor law in natural law: rules are not “law” simply because they’re passed, enforced, or widely obeyed. They must meet a moral standard that predates the state. Blackstone is offering a legitimizing frame for judges, lawyers, and citizens who want to treat certain commands as invalid even when procedurally proper. The subtext is pointed: if human authority can err, then the legitimacy of the regime is conditional, not automatic.

Context matters. Blackstone’s Commentaries helped systematize common law and later shaped Anglo-American legal education. In that transatlantic afterlife, the quote becomes a bridge between moral philosophy and constitutional argument: it’s the ancestor of “higher law” rhetoric, useful to abolitionists, civil rights advocates, and also to reactionaries who claim divine sanction for their politics. Its strength is also its hazard. “Law of God” sounds objective, but it invites the fight Blackstone sidesteps: who interprets that law, and what happens when sincere believers disagree?