They do this all of the time. They particularly misunderstand the word “includes.” For example, a federal statute may talk about how states can do this or that and has a definitional section which says, “For the purposes of this article, the term “state” shall include Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
It seems that anyone with half of a brain can understand this. The feds are passing a law dealing with states and for the purposes of this law, we are treating these places which are not states as if they were states to administer this law.
A SovCit will read that and decide that the fifty states of the United States are in fact not states at all and that the only states are the ones named. And not just for the purpose of this particular law, but for all purposes.
That one is not necessarily their fault. There is a legitimate legal principle called “expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” or, “the expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other.”
The term "includes’ is a term of limitation and not enlargement in most cases. Where it is used, it prescribes all of the things or classes of things to which the statute pertains. All other possible objects of the statute are, thereby excluded, by implication.
Now this principle does not always apply. But many times it does. There is often a vast difference, legally speaking, between “including” and “including, but not limited to.”
I disagree. Expressio unius is usually in the following form:
A person may wear a red or black dress to the party.
Some person may say that it did NOT say that she couldn’t wear a green dress to the party, so she may. Expression unius says that the specification of red or black was meant to exclude all other colors. That makes sense in the way English speakers interact. It was clearly the intention of the speaker that ONLY red or black dresses may be worn.
That definition of “includes” seems pretty narrow and has the weasel word of “most” and it seems silly in the context described above. If a statute said that “No bombs may be carried aboard the aircraft, and the word “bomb” includes incendiary fireworks” would any sane person believe that you can carry C-4 on the plane because it isn’t a firework?
Thank you for correcting my correction. You are absolutely right. The U.S. does not have distinct “admiralty” courts.
As it happens, I live in a port city in the U.S.. There are local attorneys that advertise themselves as “Proctors in Admiralty”, which actually used to be a technical distinction in the Federal court system, but now is just advertising jargon. Until 1966, in the U.S. there were admiralty lawyers, but that was just a specialized certification for lawyers to practice admiralty law in U.S. District Courts, which have original jurisdiction over all admiralty and maritime law cases - as well as a lot of other kinds of cases.
I think for purposes of international maritime law, U.S. District Courts are considered “admiralty courts”, but that’s just one of many functions they have. Admiralty law is actually a thing in the U.S., but it’s just one of many areas of law that fall within the jurisdiction of U.S. District Courts
Which feeds into their notion that because some institution functions as X or because some provision of law includes Y, then that and only that is what they are and what applies.
This applies if there’s a straightforward conditional prohibition (e.g. “No parking between 6AM and 7PM Monday-Friday” implies that parking is permitted at other times). That doesn’t cover the distinctly un-straightforward semantic shenanigans of sovereign simpletons.
And this post right here is why I read the Dope. Here we are, gently mocking Sovereign nut jobs, and along comes an actual honest-to-god admiralty lawyer with some relevant facts.
Right here on the Dope, come for the fun, stay for the insights!
A statement like you made seems like you want to tell the daughter to clean the house, but you fear that she is trying to lawyer ball you and you make an even more imprecise statement.
When anyone in the family speaks of “cleaning the house” there is usually an agreed upon meaning for that statement. It includes the common areas, but may or may not include the personal bedrooms. It probably does not include the cellar that nobody has been in for thirty years with cobwebs hanging down from it. It probably would not include cleaning the deck.
So I could see a statement of, “You are to clean the house including the bedrooms and bathrooms, the deck, and the Addams Family basement!” If the parent feared that she might lawyer ball the direction, and included a list as you did (like family room, how is that not part of the house by any definition) and did it incompletely, then I feel it would still rest on what the common understanding of what “clean the house” meant prior to the conversation. If cleaning the master bedroom was never part of cleaning the house prior, then the daughter would be right.
But in my example, a “state” is always been known as one of the fifty states and could not realistically or reasonably said not to be included in that definition.
