king." Coke defended royal supremacy in De Iure Regis Ecclesiastico in a historical commentary of the common law's protection of royal authority against papal subversion. Common law There is a legal maxim: Statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed. This is also called the "derogation canon". After the American Civil War legislation started to become more important, and some people saw common law as a way of expanding and discovering new rights under the Due Process Clause jurisprudence. Others thought that political statutes in derogation of the common law ought to be narrowly construed. This became a source of political conflict. Henry Campbell Black (of Black's Law Dictionary) wrote: It is a rule generally observed (except where prohibited by statute) that acts of the legislature made in derogation of the common law will not be extended by construction; that is, the legislature will not be presumed to intend innovations upon the common law, and its enactments will not be extended, in directions contrary to the common law, further than is indicated by the express terms of the law or by fair and reasonable implications from its nature or purpose or the language employed. However, Black wrote that the canon "no longer has any foundation in reason". Theodore Sedgwick said of common law: "It is difficult, if not impossible now to understand this enthusiastic loyalty to a body of law, the most peculiar features of which the activity of the present generation have been largely occupied in uprooting and destroying." Sedgwick too calls the derogation canon "absurd". In 1907 Roscoe Pound, in an article called "Spurious Interpretation", argued that the derogation canon had become a cover for judicial hostility towards legislation, and called into question the legitimacy of judicial fidelity to some pre-existing and conflicted common law precepts. Treaties Derogation clauses are common in modern treaties. They are often included in human rights treaties, as well as treaties on matters related to trade. Some treaties expressly disallow derogations, related to the idea of jus cogens, or international norms from which derogation is considered unjustifiable in any circumstances. One such example is the Convention Against Torture, of which Article 2(2) states: No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. Terrorism A UK law permitting warrantless