706. Why Did The Framers Hate Excessive Fines?

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the way the world works. So as you guys know, I fall into these history rabbit holes every now and then and then I get to come share what I've learned with you guys. So I want to continue talking about amendments. We do that every so often, but instead of going into everything in the eighth amendment, which is what we're going to talk about today, I want to talk about a very specific clause.

And of course, a clause means like a part of it, right? It's part of it. You hear a lot of like, there's the takings clause and there's the equal protections clause. So there's all these clauses in these different amendments and in the eighth amendment, there is one called the excessive fines clause. And I remember thinking like, oh, these seem kind of boring.

Who cares about the excessive fines clause? You know, let's get into the good stuff. Let's get into the fourth amendment. But honestly, excessive fines is really cool because it has a really cool history and my cool history. I mean, a history that's pretty wild.

So we're going to jump into that today. So as you probably know already, if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that a lot of our rights have stories rooted in England, right? Because the founders, they didn't revolt against the king of England because all of a sudden they decided that there are these new rights nobody had ever heard of before. No, there were actually rights established in Britain that people were supposed to have

that weren't happening. And then you go back to things like Magna Carta, which laid out these very specific the king cannot do. And then you had the English Bill of Rights that happens later. And so there are all these examples of what the king was not supposed to be able to do, but he was doing it anyway.

And so you get into that. And that is why the colonists were so mad. I mean, there were lots of reasons, but that was one of them. So excessive fines is one of those. So let's tell a story. All right, so our story starts 800 years ago, okay, and it's going to have to do with King

John. I want to say, I want to preface this by saying a few things. So I am like a Magna Carta fiend. I love reading about it. I love reading all these different books. And one thing people have never really settled on.

And I've gone back and forth on this in other episodes, but I want to make it very clear that there's no clear consensus. Some people believe this King John to be the one that is featured in Robinhood, but that's not a real historical story, but it's taken from that time. And just to show you like what kind of King King John was, if you've ever seen the cartoon, which is a classic, but then I've been reading other books where they say it wasn't, I don't

know for sure. And so I want to make sure that I say, I don't know for sure, but there is some evidence to say that it was, but we're going to talk about that King John today. And he is not a cool dude. He's just he has no chill guys. He's got no chill.

So let's talk about it. So King John had this buddy named William, okay, William is one of his barons. And in those days, what a baron meant is the King would kind of rent out his land to these barons who then had serfs and other people work that land. So it was the feudal system, not great, not great, but the landowners were actually how we got a lot of the rights we have today because they stood up to the King.

They were the ones who had the rights back then, which again, right should be for everybody who was born. Later on, but you get it. So there was a time when the so Prince, she was Prince John then, but King John and his nephew, they were both vying for title to the throne because the old King had died. And so there was like a there was a some discrepancy on which one of them was the true air because

they both had a pretty good claim, right? So King, the King needs King John needs a lot of support to officially like get that title. He did get it. And one of the reasons he got it was one of his barons, William, had his back and helps like not campaign for him in a sense of politicians, but he was like, tell like he had his support.

He's like, all right, guys, like we need to support King John. He's going to get us done. You know, he's had our babble bomb. So William and John become pretty close, right? Their buddies and everyone recognizes William is actually like one of King John's right hand men.

So story gets a little weirder though. So after John gets the throne, there is some civil war. There's some some spats going on because the people that wanted the nephew who was only 15 at the time, they didn't want Prince or King John, sorry, to have the throne and King John couldn't just let it go. So there was some back and forth and it always happens when people are fighting for titles.

But so this happened. So one day, this 15 year old nephew, all of a sudden just disappears and is never heard from again. And everybody is pretty sure that John did it right there. They don't know if he did it by his own hand. They don't know if he gave the order.

But one thing that is 100% known is that he had something to do with it. So William and John are still buddies, but at one point, and this is, this is again so crazy guys, something that King would often do or Kings and not just this King, but Kings that would often do is they would go essentially kidnap their barons like somebody of use to the Baron. Sometimes that was servants.

Sometimes it was sons or mostly sons. So to prove loyal, like just to prove loyalty, they wanted the barons to show them that even if they were to go kidnap their kids, that they still would be loyal to them. Now kidnapping wasn't like they were thrown in a dungeon. Usually they were taken just to like live at one of the King's properties and it was just like a test of loyalty, but still pretty messed up, right?

So William, or not William, sorry, John comes to William's house one day to do this. And William again, one of the most wealthy barons, like buds with the King. And one thing he didn't account for, so William's wife was known for not holding her tongue. She was a bold woman. So when the King's men come to collect her sons, she's like, no, I'm sorry, I am not going to send my sons to and here's where the chaos starts.

I'm not going to send my sons to a King who killed his nephew. That was a mistake. You know, it was a bold move and she is protecting her sons. She just openly accused the King of murder and the King was not having that. So the King hears about this, not happy with it. All of a sudden, he tells William he owes this fee, this fine, this outrageous fine.

And he's like, you've got to pay it. Now, William's not really sure where this fine comes from because it wasn't like he was all paid up on his, you know, feudal dues or whatever. So he was all paid up on that, a pay up on the taxes. He does not know where this fine is coming from. So not only is there no reason for it, he didn't do anything wrong other than, you know, insult

the King by accusing of murder, which he was very guilty of, but here's where it gets crazy. And that is that the King's amount that he was trying to say that William owed him was like way more than William made in a year even. And you have to remember William is one of the wealthiest barons. So he knew, he meaning the King, John, John knew that this fine was impossible for William

to pay and he did it on purpose. He did it to say, how dare you and your wife, which is a reflection of you, question my, you know, character, how dare you accuse me of murder. So this is a problem. And you know, William obviously cannot pay this, nobody could. So this is 100%, you know, retribution.

This is, this is the King getting mad at William not because any real law was broken, but because he didn't like that he was gossiping about him or that his wife was gossiping about him. So this turns into a big thing because again, obviously William cannot pay. And so the King is going to come take his house. He's probably still going to take his sons.

So the family flees. Now William flees first and then I believe his, his wife and the children, they, they kind of follow after, but they're fleeing because they know that this is not good. And you have to remember what the other barons are thinking as they're watching this. They're thinking like, if this can happen to William, who was the most beloved by the King, then this is going to happen to any of us, like this is not a good precedent to be set.

This is really bad. So what ends up happening is unfortunately William is able to make it out, but the King and his men catch up to William's wife and their kids. And he throws them in prison and unfortunately they are said to have died of starvation. So this is a horrible, horrible event. But again, the barons are watching this.

And remember the barons already had, if you go back and listen to a Magna Carta episode, I think there's been a couple because I'm obsessed with Magna Carta. So they go, the, the barons are all watching this and they're thinking, okay, the King is out of control. This is not okay. This is not the first time he's done something like this.

This is like one of the more severe things again happening to someone he loves. He doesn't care about us. He's going to do even worse to us. So this is one of the final straws that, what is it, the straw that breaks the camel's back as the saying? One of the last straws for the barons before Magna Carta and just too long didn't read

as they say, if you recall, the Magna Carta was essentially the King being forced to sign a charter that said, hey, bro, you can't do this. You can't abuse your power. You have to promise the barons this, this, this and this. And it was the first time a rule of law had been established on paper, which is why it is such a big deal, which is why the founders loved Magna Carta.

It's why people like John Locke and these philosophers turn to Magna Carta to shape their ideas and their philosophy on what freedom looks like. So this is a big deal. So excessive fines, this belief that this is, that was an excessive fine, right? That is what sets the foundation for, no, sorry, government, you can't make an excessive fine. So what is an excessive fine?

That is when something is not proportional to the offense you committed, okay? So if you break my toy and my toy costs $10, I cannot demand you pay me $1,000, right? Ultimately, when you break something of mine, you need to make me whole again. Whole again, meaning replace the monetary value I lost or replace the toy in question, right? You need to make me whole by taking what you fixing, what you took or broke. So when someone commits an offense and hopefully it is appropriate, I mean, it's not an unjust

offense, which we have tons of today, but let's say you forget to pay your taxes. And again, I'm not saying I love taxes, I wish they didn't exist, but let's say you forget to pay your taxes. The government can technically come take what you owe in like, by taking items you owe or seizing your paycheck. Again, I don't agree with this.

I'm just saying it is what it is. And as long as it is only what you owe them, they can do that, but they can't take more than they are owed. That is in the Constitution, in the Fifth Amendment's taking clause. And it also ties into the Eighth Amendment's excessive fines clause, because taking more than you owe would be what, excessive, very excessive.

So that is where we get this. And sometimes it's called the law of proportionality. And it didn't start with Magna Carta. This goes way back. You have the Romans that were doing it. You have ancient Hebrew.

We have heard of an eye for an eye. And a lot of times you hear people criticize that. You say things like an eye, or you know an eye for an eye makes the world go blind, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that wasn't as bad as we've kind of thought it means today. What eye for an eye really meant was it was honing in on this law of proportionality.

Meaning if you take my eye, I can take your eye, but I can't take your eye in your arm. So it was actually establishing this excessive fines, this lack, or sorry, this prohibition of excessive fines. So these are all things that have been in human history for a long time, even though it took some time for it to be solidified into law in our more modern era. And I know be talking about 1776 as a modern era is crazy, but it is if you look at the

whole, you know, scope of world history. So that is what this excessive fines meant, right? This is what it meant to the people. And so goes to the barons, they start getting these rights and obviously that's going to trickle down and over time the founders are going to look at what's happening to them with the King's abuse and say, hold up, you are, you know, giving us excessive fines.

This isn't fair. And so that's going to trickle down into what will eventually be our eight amendment in the Bill of Rights, which as we talked about in another episode, Bill of Rights almost didn't happen at all, but you can go back to that episode, I will not spoil that for you. So excessive fines, and this is one thing I love about getting to break down these amendments with you guys or parts of the amendments is, you know, we look at them as like eight amendment

and the text is not very long in our amendments, right? It's sometimes like a paragraph, but within those paragraphs, sometimes there can be like, there's like a handful of different rights. And each, each right each clause has like a rich history of why it's in there. Nothing was just thrown in there for fun. So eight amendment today, we're just going over that one part, which is excessive fines.

And now you know a little bit of history about why it happened and why King John was just again, not a cool dude guys. King John was not the best, but we will wrap it up there. It's always don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast and until next time I will talk to you later.