57 RI Bar J., No. 5, Pg. 31. From What Spirit and to What Do You Drive?.

• Author: Alex Ruskell, Esq.Associate Director of Academic Support, Roger Williams University School of Law

Rhode Island Bar Journal

Volume 57.

57 RI Bar J., No. 5, Pg. 31.

From What Spirit and to What Do You Drive?

Rhode Island Bar Journal57 RI Bar J., No. 5, Pg. 31March/April 2009 "From What Spirit and to What Do You Drive?"(fn1)Alex Ruskell, Esq.Associate Director of Academic Support, Roger Williams University School of Law While images of Roger Williams are unlikely to ever join those of Che Guevera on the T-shirt rack at the Providence Place Hot Topic, Williams was a rebel. And his was a rebellion of the purest sort, driven not by inclination of personality, but by personal conviction. Williams, if he is thought of at all today, is remembered as a religious rebel, when in fact, he was a legal rebel. He advocated for the separation between Church and State and also argued that the Native Americans had land rights entitling them to negotiation and just compensation. He challenged forced conversions and argued that any oath in court should only be sworn by believers, since asking an unbeliever to say "so help me God" was tantamount to taking the Lord's name in vain. Importantly, he made these assertions even though his contemporaries believed colonization and theocracy were divine truths. Only Williams was brave enough to say they were also unjust.

As a young man, Williams was a prot

So, without God, what was the basis of the law? What was left was rebellion. Without a person challenging the status quo, without a case in controversy, a law could not be questioned or evaluated, and it certainly could not be called just. The common law is a continuous set of competing assertions, and if one fails to make an assertion because of the idea of God or precedent or history or censure or even exile, the law is dead. Every legal assertion, no matter how minor, is a rebellion. By his ideas, Williams was a living, breathing model of the common law.

A man like Williams is necessarily an enigma to his contemporaries. John Winthrop, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, once asked Williams, "From what spirit and to what do you drive?"(fn2) Williams responded, "I witness what I believe."(fn3) John Cotton, Williams' chief antagonist and a prominent Boston minister, argued that Williams' convictions were in fact satanic. Ultimately, his convictions, not any direct action, led the colonial government to order his exile, with a wife, a two-year...