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( Police power)
Police power is the capacity of a state to regulate behaviours and enforce order within its territory, often framed in terms of public welfare, security, morality, and safety.[1] Police power is legally considered an inherent power, limited only by prohibitions specified in the constitution of a state, making it the most expansive authorized power exercised by a state.[citation needed] The concept of police power (or simply "police") in English common law dates back at least four centuries[2] and roughly coincides with the breakdown of the feudal order in Europe and the development of towns and cities (polis).[3] The exercise of police power can be in the form of making laws, compelling obedience to those laws through physical means with the aim of removing liberty, legal sanctions, or other forms of coercion and inducements. Controversies over the exercise of police power, particularly the use of physical means, arise when it conflicts with the rights of sub-national states and individuals or civil liberties, such as the police power of American states for example, or police brutality. In American legal history, police power has a particular significance for interpreting the constitutional division of power. Nineteenth-century Supreme Court rulings confirmed that the federal government had certain powers delegated by the constitution, but that all unspecified regulatory powers, or "police power," rested with the states. The concept was expanded in the New Deal era to grant police power to the federal government under the commerce clause of the constitution, extending it to the provision of services to enhance public welfare.[4] US courts now rely on a "balance of interests" doctrine to settle contests over police power.[5] French Economist Frédéric Bastiat advanced the following democratic theory of police power in his 1849 book, The Law.[6] The police power is essentially derived from the individual power of self-defense. If someone attacks you, he argues, you have a right, given to you by God[7], to use force to resist, or detain this person, and as people come together by compact to form democratic forms of self-rule, it becomes practical for citizens to delegate this power to an external body, such as to a militia or police force.
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