“Show the law before you take a liberty.” In the machine age, we should ask the same of systems and their stewards: show the rule, show the evidence, show the consent—and make it possible to say no.

— Aditya Mohan, Founder, CEO & Philosopher-Scientist, Robometrics® Machines

Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641) as a colonial bill of rights and a modern map for AI-era due process

Scene — Boston, 1641. 

Night settles over the bay and a salt wind threads through a timber‑frame meetinghouse. By a brick hearth, townsmen and their families pass around a hand‑copied sheet, the ink still brown and new. A clerk reads in a steady voice about limits on punishment, the right to a jury, the promise that no one’s life or land will be taken except by “express law of the Country.” Heads nod. A cooper wipes his hands; a widow draws closer to the firelight. Outside, on other nights, drums announce sentences in the street—exactly the practices this paper is meant to discipline.

A colonial bill of rights takes shape

Adopted in Boston in December 1641 and drafted largely by minister‑lawyer Nathaniel Ward, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties set out ninety‑eight sections that fused Puritan norms with English common‑law protections. It condemned cruel punishments and forced confessions, recognized the right to bail and trial by jury, guarded against double jeopardy, and insisted that inhabitants and “strangers” alike enjoy the same justice. Women gained protections against bodily correction by a husband, widows a “competent portion” of an estate. The General Court’s reach was bounded: no perpetual servitude, no monopolies, no compulsory military service for distant wars. Even animals were not beyond the law’s care—“No man shall exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature.”

The contradiction that indicts the ideal

Section 91 made room for slavery—permitting captivity in “just wars” and the purchase of those sold into bondage. Liberty was asserted and betrayed in the same breath. That fracture matters now: it teaches that a rights‑regime can advance humane commitments while encoding structural harm. In our time, the analog is an AI system that speaks the language of inclusion yet learns from biased records and replays the past as prediction.

From hearth to amendments

Though later superseded and challenged by the Crown, the Body’s DNA runs forward into American law—echoes in Amendments V through VIII: due process, self‑incrimination, double jeopardy, the right to a jury, and bans on cruel and unusual punishment. Its most durable habit is procedural: show the authority, respect equality, and make the evidence reliable.

AI link 

Consent, confession, and the credibility of machine evidence. The Body of Liberties’ suspicion of coerced statements maps cleanly onto 2025 concerns about AI‑age “consent” and “confession.” When data is harvested through dark patterns or unreadable terms, consent isn’t truly voluntary. When synthetic audio or video pressures a suspect—or a model fabricates plausible but false details—an “automated confession” collides with due‑process norms. The colonial demand for reliable proof points to modern requirements: provenance for digital evidence, documented chains of custody for model outputs, adversarial testing of accuracy, and the right to challenge opaque inference.

Coercion, bias, and medical autonomy in the model era 

The Body’s spirit also animates today’s digital rights debates: extending equal protection to online spaces, policing regulatory arbitrage by firms that exploit legal gaps, and auditing algorithms trained on skewed historical data. In medicine, informed consent must travel with AI diagnostics—patients deserve clear explanations, control over sensitive data, and the ability to decline automated decision‑making when stakes are high. These are not luxuries; they are the operational form of “no taking of liberty without express law.”

Legislation and enforcement in 2025 

Massachusetts and peer states are moving on transparency and accountability for AI that targets consumers, while consumer‑protection laws such as Chapter 93A are already being used against unfair or deceptive AI‑driven practices. Lawmakers have reintroduced bans on deceptive interrogation tactics—an old principle sharpened for a new toolset—recognizing that psychological pressure scales when machines assist. The design brief is clear: embed liberties by design. Make consent plain and revocable, log model provenance, forbid automated confessions, mandate audits for bias and reliability, and keep a human, accountable adjudicator in the loop.

Why it matters now. The paper by the hearth taught a community to demand, “Show the law before you take a liberty.” In the machine age, we should ask the same of systems and their stewards: show the rule, show the evidence, show the consent—and make it possible to say no.