Tiedeman states that the police powers under the constitution are strictly limited to enforcing the maxim: “use your own property in such a manner as not to injure that of another” (1886)

Tiedeman was part of a movement by conservative “laissez-faire” legal scholars in the late 19th century to defend the ideal of strictly limited government from the attacks of “Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism.” The quote comes from the introduction to the 1886 edition of his major work on the “police powers” and is a very impassioned plea for liberty. In what amounts to a battle of the latin phrases, he makes his case as follows: under the rule of absolute monarchs the legal principle was “quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem” or “that which pleases the prince has the strength of law;” when the power of monarchs was being challenged in the 18th century the legal principle changed to that of “vox populi, vox Dei” (“the voice of the people is the voice of God”), in other words that rulers were the servants of the people, not vice versa; but in the late 19th century the rise of democracy had turned this maxim into the extreme position that the “people” could use the law to do anything they wanted. Tiedeman argued in his book that according to the natural law upon which the U.S. Constitution was based, the guiding principle of the government should be confined to enforcing the maxim that “sic utere tuo, ut alienum non lædas” (“use your own property in such a manner as not to injure that of another”).