“Thus, for example, in 1875, in Loan Association vs. Topeka the Court said: “It must be conceded that there are such rights in every free government beyond the control of the state, a government which recognised no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute disposition and unlimited control of even the most democratic depository of power is, after all, a despotism…….The theory of our governments, state or municipal, is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere. The executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of these governments are all of limited and defined powers. There are limitations on such power which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments-implied reservations of individual rights, without which the social compact could not exist, and which are respected by all governments entitled to the name. No court, for instance, would hesitate to declare void a statute which enacted that A and B who were husband and wife to each other should be so no longer, but that A should thereafter be the husband of C, and B the wife of D, or which should enact that the homestead now owned by A should henceforth be the property of B.”
