You know what I would love in this thread. Someone from Somalia or Mali or a Tibetan national. You know, someone that really has no rights under their government complaining.
Then have the OP tell them to move somewhere with more freedom.
@BrainGlutton, the idea that the common law resided “in the bosom of the judges” was only ever a device to lend authority to the pronouncements of courts. It was the legal equivalent of the priest going behind the veil into the exclusive inner sanctum, and coming out with the latest Word of Og. That theory of law is as quaint as the theory of the divine right of kings, and as well accepted currently.
If, as you say, SovCits adhere to it as a premise from which argument begins, then their foolishness is manifest. For my part, I don’t think they are that sophisticated - I think they just don’t know how to argue in the realm of legal discourse and gather together ill-formed ideas from elementary school mathematics and school debates and pile them all together. In other words, their thinkin’ bone done got broke.
Even if we accept that they are using the term “common law” as a sort of misplaced label for natural law, the idea that there is such a thing as a workable theory of “natural law” to underpin the entire legal system founders, to anyone who reflects for a moment, on what the detail of its content might be.
The law frequently throws up situations where it must choose between comparably appealing arguments, yet it must choose even though there is no intuitive right answer. We can only ever collectively agree on grand principles at a high level of abstraction, like “Murder is, um, bad” but a legal system has to have answers for situations at the level of fine detail where people might reasonably disagree if called upon to apply their native sense of justice. Even natural ideas about murder struggle when confronted with detail. What about self defence? What should its limits be? What about accident? What should its limits be? What should the limits of the defence of obedience to higher orders be? We can all agree, since Nuremberg, that there should be limits to the “obeying orders” defence, and that the Nazis wildly crossed the line, but what exactly is the line, for future cases? This is not something that will attract near universal instinctive agreement.
Yet a decision has to be made, or else the law would be a self-serving stewpot of whatever anyone wanted it to be. That necessarily implies the existence of something like a legislature, and courts to make the necessary decisions. And it implies the existence of powers to deal with people who, if left to their own devices, would disagree with the decision made about what the law should be so that they may not simply ignore it. Simply put, the idea of natural law as the basis of a legal system immediately collapses to something like what we now have, including all the methods for resolving disagreement about the content of the law that we now have, which the primitive SovCit idea of natural law was supposed to dispense with. I am here using natural law in place of the SovCits’ use of the term common law, which does not mean what they think it means.
In other words, notions of natural law occasionally allow us to do things like call shenanigans on Goering et al, but on their own they cannot provide even a faint approximation of what is necessary for an entire legal system to actually work.
And now we come to the point of the whole thing.
I do wonder how it would go if two SCs appeared in court as plaintiff and defendant in the same case . . .
It’s called “paper terrorism.” See these cites:
– Paper terrorism (Wikipedia link).
– Georgia Bill Attacks ‘Paper Terrorism’ as FBI Takes Aim at ‘Sovereigns’, from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
– Curb on ‘Paper Terrorism’ Is Headed for Passage, from the New York Law Journal.
– Growing, lurking threat: “Paper terrorism” from Salon.com.
I think the notion that the law dictionary (or any dictionary, for that matter) id prescriptive, rather than descriptive, ties in neatly with the idea that they are taking the law back from the academics who think they’re smarter than everyone and the lawyers with their fancy Latin and returning it to the common people. Indeed, the law dictionary levels the playing field by making all the jargon no longer the exclusive province of the lawyers*. It’s a similar distrust of educated people exhibited by Gene Ray. Coke et al are just more so-called authorities who use their education and privilege (which, well…) to oppress people.
*With a note of “if you’re going to jargon at me I’m going to jargon right back; I don’t understand yours, so I assume you’re making it up, so I’m justified in making it up too”
As you and others have said, Black’s provides easy definitions for legal concepts. It is understandable by law students, and as such, accessible to the layperson. More accessible and understandable than Coke, Littleton, and Blackstone, anyway. I agree with what has been offered so far in regards to why OPCAs/FOTLs find Black’s so appealing.
But in my readings and research on the matter, I’ve found one important thing that has not been mentioned so far: the second edition of Black’s costs nothing to use for anyone with online access: see here, for example; or here, from the World Freeman Society. From what I can tell, subsequent editions are not as easily or as freely available, and would require either an expensive outlay of money for an up-to-date edition, or a trip to the local law library (which may not be very local, and/or require too much work). IME, few general public libraries have a copy of Black’s, and even fewer have Coke, Littleton, and Blackstone. Far easier to use what you can find online for free from the comfort of your own home, even if it is outdated.
And that is why I recommended that he start with Blacks - because it is definitions specific to the way words are used in the legal system.
It was like Christmas in July.
I didn’t mean to sound like I was dissing your suggestion, aruvqan, if you thought that. Using dictionaries in good faith with a recognition of their limitations can help people understand things. But SovCits do not approach matters in good faith, they cherry pick for any sliver of language that can be tortured into seeming to support their loony views.
Well, I think I understand the world view here.
Natural Law, or common law, or whatever you call it, is eternal and unchangeable, because it was created by God, or by Nature. You don’t create natural law any more than humans created the law of gravity, you discover it either through logic or divine revelation.
Since you can’t create Law, it therefore follows that legislatures can’t create laws. They can only create statutes, which are rules that apply to temporal profane man-made activities like corporations. These rules can’t apply to eternal God-created entities like human beings. The proper role of government is not to create law, but to apply God-created natural law.
But how then do we have situations where there is a statute that conflicts with Law? It can’t conflict, because that would be impossible. Governments can’t create laws that apply to human beings. Governments therefore must trick the citizens into believing that statutes apply to human beings rather than corporations. But since that makes no sense, all a clear-headed free man must do is avoid their tricks and consistently apply God-created natural law, and they will be as untouchable as Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego.
But of course the fatal flaw in this logic is that, even if we stipulate that Natural Law is divinely ordained and unchangeable, it is still possible to break these natural laws. Otherwise murder or rape or assault would be physically impossible.
So governments can create laws that compel you to pay your taxes, just like murderers can stab people with knives. The fact that stabbing people is against Natural Law doesn’t mean it is impossible to stab people, the fact that compelling people to pay taxes is against Natural Law doesn’t mean it is impossible for governments to compel people to pay taxes. Maybe creating such a law is as unjust as stabbing a grandmother in the face and stealing her jewelry, but it isn’t physically impossible in our fallen world for a sinner to rob and kill. It isn’t physically impossible for cops to lock you up for not paying your taxes.
We could take the FotL argument to the extreme absurd limit and claim that Natural Law isn’t broken. Human beings are tricked by themselves or others into accepting their own murders or rapes or assaults, meaning the perpetrators aren’t actually guilty of violating Natural Law which, by definition, can’t be broken.
So, it’s all in the the victim’s own heads and, ultimately, their own faults.
Are there many atheist “Free Men”?
But natural law is limited to such things as gravity, inertia and the speed of light; there are no natural laws governing human relationships like slavery, or property or freedom. If there were, animals like grizzly bears would be subject to them, the same as they are subject to the laws of physics. A grizzly bear doesn’t care about your property, or that you own your body and have right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those concepts are human constructs, created along with the artificiality of civilization. To the bear, you are just food, and he is not bound to respect any rights you claim for yourself. There is no natural right to liberty. That must be worked out between men.
Especially if it were a divorce case. Too bad they don’t allow popcorn in court.
It beats the hell out of hearing Lobo singing “Me and you and a dog named Boo/Travelling and living off the land/Me and you and a dog named Boo/How I loved being a free man”
Well, as an atheist, I’ve tried to get a few FoTLers to answer this question: As an atheist, am I required to follow any laws at all? If statutes require “consent”, and I have no fear of Devine retribution, it seems to me I’d be completely free of any constraints at all, were FoTLism to be true.
Either that, or the mechanisms they’d use to enforce their (to me imaginary) “God’s Laws” on me, could be used to enforce statute laws against the FoTLers.
Of course none of them have ever even tried to answer this.
Really? Not from any of these people?: Devine - Wikipedia