War & Peace Quote by David Davis

It’s the kind of sentence that tries to slam the door on every convenient excuse a government might reach for when power feels urgent. The intent is absolute: no special constitutional weather rules for emergencies, no wartime dispensations that let leaders treat rights as optional. By stacking “rulers and people” beside “war and peace,” and then widening to “all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances,” David Davis builds a rhetorical cage. Each clause anticipates the next loophole and bars it.

The subtext is suspicion: not of citizens, but of rulers. This is constitutionalism as restraint, a reminder that the state’s most persuasive story - necessity - is also its most dangerous. The “shield of its protection” metaphor matters because it flips the usual wartime framing. In war, governments speak in swords: sacrifice, security, force. Davis insists the Constitution is defensive equipment, meant to be held up precisely when passions run hottest and institutions are most tempted to cut corners.

Contextually, the line is famous from Ex parte Milligan (1866), where the Supreme Court rejected military trials for civilians when civilian courts were operating. Davis, then a justice (not a modern-day politician), was arguing against the idea that crisis creates a parallel legal universe. The quote’s power comes from its refusal to perform realism. It doesn’t negotiate with fear; it names the principle that makes a democracy legible: law that binds most tightly when it’s hardest to obey.