This is a Complaint pleading for use in litigation of the title matter. Adapt this form to comply with your facts and circumstances, and with your specific state law. Not recommended for use by non-attorneys.
This is a Complaint pleading for use in litigation of the title matter. Adapt this form to comply with your facts and circumstances, and with your specific state law. Not recommended for use by non-attorneys.
The Stamp Act was enacted in 1765 by British Parliament. It imposed a direct tax on all printed material in the North American colonies. The most politically active segments of colonial society—printers, publishers, and lawyers—were the most negatively affected by the act.
Each colony had its own government, but the British king controlled these governments. By the 1770s, many colonists were angry because they did not have self-government. This meant that they could not govern themselves and make their own laws.
The Declaratory Act noted that Parliament “had hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”
The opinionated writers of colonial newspapers expressed their fear that the powers Parliament assumed in the Declaratory Act were detrimental to the ancient Constitution. One of the strongest fears about the Act was that it declared Parliament supreme, while the realm of its supremacy had no foreseeable end.
In the colonies, leaders had been glad when the Stamp Act was repealed, but the Declaratory Act was a new threat to their independence. It was 1766, and to most colonists, the ability of England to tax the colonies without giving them representation in Parliament was seen as disgraceful.
Perhaps we can be told why a purely declaratory act was necessary in those circumstances. Declaratory legislation which does not provide easy methods of implementation can easily do more harm than good.
An act for the better securing the dependency of his majesty's dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain. This act was passed to assert the authority of the British government to tax its subjects in North America after it repealed the much-hated Stamp Act.
The Declaratory Act of 1766 declared that the British Parliament had the absolute right to tax colonies in North America. At first, the Act did not greatly upset the colonists; however, when the Townshend Acts of 1787 began limiting colonial assembly, colonists felt that the British government was acting tyrannical.
The purpose of the Declaratory Act of 1766 was to affirm that Great Britain had complete authority to tax its American colonies. Colonists had been upset by the Sugar Act of 1764 and Stamp Act of 1765, which they viewed as taxation without representation.
This act was passed to assert the authority of the British government to tax its subjects in North America after it repealed the much-hated Stamp Act.