Who Are You In Law? American Slavery Defined! Part 1
What is a "United States Citizen"?
We were taught growing up that it was a right/privilege for being born in this country called The United States of America. So, as I used to believe, and most to this day believe, it means that yes; I am from here, ancestors are from here, God bless the USA. But, in law this is not what it means.
I discovered a case about 5 and half years ago from the federal court that opened my eyes to a completely different thought process. This case is Jones v Temmer 829 F. Supp. 1226.
In this case Leroy Jones and other Plaintiffs, in the United States District Court of Colorado. The Plaintiffs allege violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.
We were taught growing up that the Fourteenth Amendment gave us protection of our rights. Well, Rights can not be protected by a piece of paper, and they are unalienable, or can not be liened. But, you can give them up. The Bible says, "For my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge"
Back to the case: Plaintiffs brought this action pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and 28 U.S.C. § 2201. Jurisdiction is claimed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343.
The first instance in this case where the court clearly stated that a United States Citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect rights and does not have access to the Bill Of Rights was quoted as follows;
"Plaintiffs respond that defendants have confused the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment with the privileges and immunities clause under Article IV, section 2 of the Constitution. The privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects very few rights because it neither incorporates any of the Bill of Rights nor protects all rights of individual citizens. See Slaughter–House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1873). Instead, this provision protects only those rights peculiar to being a citizen of the federal government; it does not protect those rights which relate to state citizenship."
It went on to further say;
"The privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects very few rights. To my knowledge, in the history of the United States Supreme Court, only one decision determined that a state violated this provision and that decision was overruled within a few years. Colgate v. Harvey, 296 U.S. 404, 56 S.Ct. 252, 80 L.Ed. 299 (1935), overruled in Madden v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 60 S.Ct. 406, 84 L.Ed. 590 (1940). In the Slaughter–House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1873), the Supreme Court held that this clause neither incorporates the Bill of Rights nor protects all rights of individual citizens. Rather the provision protects only those rights peculiar to being a citizen of the United States; it does not protect those rights which relate to state citizenship. As a court of this district noted, “the argument that the clause creates a substantive right to pursue one's lawful occupation or profession free from state limitations was laid to rest long *1234 ago by the United States Supreme Court.” Galahad v. Weinshienk, 555 F.Supp. 1201, 1207 (D.Colo.1983)."
This is when I learned about this Legal Fiction called a United States Citizen. A legal fiction does not mean fake. The term Legal Fiction is defined in Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014), legal fiction
LEGAL FICTION
legal fiction (17c) An assumption that something is true even though it may be untrue, made esp. in judicial reasoning to alter how a legal rule operates; specif., a device by which a legal rule or institution is diverted from its original purpose to accomplish indirectly some other object. • The constructive trust is an example of a legal fiction. — Often shortened to fiction. — Also termed fiction of law; fictio juris.
“I … employ the expression ‘Legal Fiction’ to signify any assumption which conceals, or affects to conceal, the fact that a rule of law has undergone alteration, its letter remaining unchanged, its operation being modified… It is not difficult to understand why fictions in all their forms are particularly congenial to the infancy of society. They satisfy the desire for improvement, which is not quite wanting, at the same time that they do not offend the superstitious disrelish for change which is always present.” Henry S. Maine, Ancient Law 21–22 (17th ed. 1901).
“Legal fiction is the mask that progress must wear to pass the faithful but blear-eyed watchers of our ancient legal treasures. But though legal fictions are useful in thus mitigating or absorbing the shock of innovation, they work havoc in the form of intellectual confusion.” Morris R. Cohen, Law and the Social Order 126 (1933).
It means it was a created entity. This entity was created by Congress in 1868 with the creation of the fourteenth amendment. (now there is some evidence to support the fact that it was not properly ratified, but we will not discuss this here.)
To bring a proper understanding to what the Fourteenth Amendment is you have to look at the original intent of the congress.
I found a Law Review Journal that quotes as follows:
"Even though the central purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment were to end *699 discrimination against and subordination of the former slaves, and there was no intent to provide any protection to women" 13 Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. L. Rev. 691 Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review Spring 2004 Symposium Vision and Revision: Exploring the History, Evolution, And Future of the Fourteenth Amendment Sylvia A. Law
This really got me to thinking about the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, and who does it apply to. According to everything I find it only applied to former slaves. This Amendment was supposedly ratified in 1868, but we will discuss this at a later time.
Let us look at natural law for a moment then we will go back to the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. Lysander Spooner was a political philosopher that lived from January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887. He would be close to the time of the founders of this country and was very familiar with all the practices of the "common law" of England of the day. His views are quoted quite a bit in Law Review Journals. Here is on footnote from a Law Review Journal;
According to Spooner, natural law is the paramount law, and there can be no law, properly speaking, that is not natural law. See id. at 8; see also 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England § 2 at 63 (William Carey Jones ed., 1916) (The natural law is “superior in obligation to any other. [N]o human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this.”). Walter Murphy observes that other statements by Blackstone are not entirely consistent with his position that natural law supersedes any enacted law contradicting it. See Walter F. Murphy, The Art of Constitutional Interpretation: A Preliminary Showing, in Essays on the Constitution of the United States 130, 139 (M. Judd Harmon ed., 1978). Charles H. Cosgrove, The Declaration of Indep. in Constitutional Interpretation: A Selective History & Analysis, 32 U. Rich. L. Rev. 107, 164 (1998)
Natural law is the law that is written on the hearts of "man". Everyone knows that murder is wrong, and that stealing is wrong. so there are statutes and/or codes written that reflect this.
If you look at history slavery has always been the norm in every society. This doesn't always mean that it is right, but it is never the less the norm. Slavery comes in many different forms. The mass media only portrays one type of slavery. The slavery of the oppressive white man over the black man. I am not going to belittle that issue, because that is wrong. But, that is designed to only let you see one thing. There is a reason why the establishment has told us to never talk about religion and politics. Politics matters for the now, and Religion matters for the hereafter. The two most important things you should be talking about.
The reason I bring this up is that the founders built this system on the Holy Bible and the principles it lays out. If you throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak you miss the very principles that had kept us "free" as a people. I am going to lay out a couple of principles in this that are historically accurate before we go back into the Fourteenth Amendment.
Principle 1 How Slavery was made legal.
Lets back track 3 years from 1868 to 1865 at the ratification of the thirteenth amendment. Now, before we get in the text of the thirteenth amendment, you first have to really grasp a fundamental due process doctrine. This doctrine is "void for vagueness".
In the case Connally v. Gen. Const. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S. Ct. 126, 127, 70 L. Ed. 322 (1926) the court states as follows;
"That the terms of a penal statute creating a new offense must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties is a well-recognized requirement, consonant alike with ordinary notions of fair play and the settled rules of law; and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law. International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 216, 221, 34 S. Ct. 853, 58 L. Ed. 1284; Collins v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 634, 638, 34 S. Ct. 924, 58 L. Ed. 1510."
Any law that is written has to be written in such a way that anyone with "common intelligence" can understand it. When the courts look at a law they look at what is said, and what is not said. now lets look at the Thirteenth Amendment;
Amendment XIII. Slavery Abolished; Enforcement Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Slavery was not abolished completely, only partially. According to the text of the thirteenth amendment, if you commit a crime and are duly convicted by a jury of your peers you are a slave. Under natural law that is a justifiable form of slavery. You owe a debt to the person and/or property that was injured and/or harmed. So, I pose a few questions; do you want to know why we have the most non-violent offenders in prison per capita compared to any other country in the world? Do you want to know why we have the most private prisons? It is simple. it is the new plantations. Now before you think this is the only form of slavery in this country read further.
What is not said is voluntary slavery or servitude is COMPLETELY legal. "Man" has a right to volunteer to be what ever he likes. now the system we have is not completely voluntary. But, I will quote a bible verse that lays out another principle; Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. Now, there are going to be some Christians that will say I am miss using this verse. It isn't only applicable to the truth of the Creator, but also to life in general. When we were young mom said, "don't touch the stove", and we all learned the hard way.
You may say to justify the system that they broke a law so they deserve to be in prison. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but what you think of as a crime is not what the government constitutes as a crime. In 27 C. F. R. 72.11 Meaning of Terms.
Commercial crimes. Any of the following types of crimes (Federal or State): Offenses against the revenue laws; burglary; counterfeiting; forgery; kidnapping; larceny; robbery; illegal sale or possession of deadly weapons; prostitution (including soliciting, procuring, pandering, white slaving, keeping house of ill fame, and like offenses); extortion; swindling and confidence games; and attempting to commit, conspiring to commit, or compounding any of the foregoing crimes. Addiction to narcotic drugs and use of marihuana will be treated as if such were commercial crime.
You are thinking, what does this list have to do with commercial activity. This will become very clear as you go on this article, but it is called the commerce clause of the constitution. Lets look at the next principle.
Principle 2 Transfer of property
If I have an item for sale that you want, and we negotiate a price. You agree to the price, and you pay me for the item. What just happened was a transfer of property.
You would say that is correct. Now lets apply this principle.
On April 16, 1862 there was an act passed and singed into law, it was known as the District of Columbia Compensation Emancipation Act. Here is from one source;
Thomas Marshall Key--the Great Compromiser of the Ohio Senate--was planning to strike at the root cause of the conflict. Using all his legislative skills, Key would personally create the template to satisfy and reunify the warring sides and bring an end to the Civil War.” Key wrote what became the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which abolished slavery in the District and compensated owners up to $300 dollars for freeing their slaves. In keeping with his character, Key took no credit for drafting the *255 legislation. Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson introduced the bill, which was approved by House and Senate and signed by President Lincoln on April 16, 1862, despite misgivings by Republicans who termed the compensation “ransom” as well as from Democrats who were opposed to abolition, compensated or not.35 Commander Michael Cavallaro, Mcclellan's Other Story, 216 Mil. L. Rev. 246, 254–55 (2013)
So if the owners received payment for their "property" what really happened was a transfer of ownership. You may not agree, but lets look at a legal definition for the word property;
Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014), property
PROPERTY
property (14c) 1. Collectively, the rights in a valued resource such as land, chattel, or an intangible. • It is common to describe property as a “bundle of rights.” These rights include the right to possess and use, the right to exclude, and the right to transfer. — Also termed bundle of rights. 2. Any external thing over which the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment are exercised
Did you catch it? The right to transfer!
Lets look a little deeper at the legal definition of property according to American Jurisprudence 2d, which is one of two legal encyclopedias.
The legal definition of property most often refers not to a particular physical object, but rather to the legal bundle of rights recognized in that object, which bundle of rights includes the rights to possess, use, and dispose of a particular article. The term "property" embodies more than just physical, corporeal assets; it can include intangible entities, such as rights and interests. As a matter of legal definition, "property" refers not to a particular material object, but to the right and interest in an object; as to a thing, "property" does not consist merely in its ownership or possession, but also in the lawful, unrestricted right of its use, enjoyment, and disposal. In its precise legal sense, property is nothing more than a collection of rights; indeed, "property," in law, is not the material object itself, but is the right and interest or domination rightfully obtained over such object, with the unrestricted right to its use, enjoyment, and disposition.6 63C Am. Jur. 2d Property § 1
So, by the Federal Government agreeing to pay the slave owners their ownership rights were transferred to the federal government. The Federal Government or the powers that took over the federal government had to figure out how to enslave everyone. Lets look at the third Principle.
Principle 3 What you create you own
Lets give a hypothetical situation. Lets just say you came up with some brilliant idea for a widget. You go into you closet, garage, or shed, and make said widget. Would that creation not be yours? You would say YES it would be.
Apply that principle to Congress. What it creates it owns. The Legislature has the authority to create every rule, regulation, and/or entity it choose. It had the authority to create an entity called a "United States Citizen" and it did this in 1868 with the Fourteenth amendment. Up until that time it did not exist in law. So, because of your belief in this fictional entity, you have accepted the consequences of those actions. Now you mat say, it is not a fictional entity, but, the courts have said this. In Ex Parte Knowles, 5 Cal. 300 the court states as follows;
"A citizen of any one of the States of the Union, is held to be, and called a citizen of the United States, although technically and abstractly there is no such thing. To conceive a citizen of the United States who is not a citizen of some one of the States, is totally foreign to the idea, and inconsistent with the proper construction and common understanding of the expression as used in the Constitution, which must be deduced from its various other provisions. The object then to be attained, by the exercise of the power of naturalization, was to make citizens of the respective States."
This was before the Fourteenth Amendment. That Amendment changed the very nature of everything. In the Knowles court they stated that there was no such thing as a United States Citizen. I was only because you were born in one of the several states that made you part of the union that we call the United States of America. but, the Citizen itself did not exist. it only took 13 years for that to change. In Colgate v Harvey, 296 U. S. 404, 56 S. Ct. 252, 80 L. Ed. 299 the court states as follows;
while the Fourteenth Amendment does not create a national citizenship, it has the effect of making that citizenship ‘paramount and dominant’ instead of ‘derivative and dependent’ upon state citizenship.
What happened? It was a quasi-Federal usurpation of power. Up until the Fourteenth Amendment the federal government was subject to the people. Now they have turned things upside down and have made the people subject to the Federal Government. I have said this for years, that by all intents and purposes we have a Caesar in the form of government we have today. In State v. Manuel, 4 Dev. & Bat. 144, 20 N.C. 144 (1838) the court defined the word Citizen as follows; "
The term “citizen” as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term subject in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people--and he who before was a “subject of the king” is now “a citizen of the State.” "
This case is still a standing case and is used today in our legal encyclopedias. In Corpus Juris Secundum it defines citizen as follows;
14 C.J.S. Citizens § 3
Corpus Juris Secundum
Citizens
I. In General
§ 3. Citizen defined—
Comparison with other terms
The term "citizen" is analogous to the term " subject" in the common law but is generally never used of the people in a monarchy.
While the words "subject" and "citizen" are regarded as words of different import, and the term "citizen" is generally never used of the people in a monarchy, since the term "citizen" involves an idea not enjoyed by subjects, that is, the inherent right to partake in the government, such term is, in the United States, analogous to the term "subject" in the common law. The change of phrase resulted from the change of government. Thus, as used in a treaty, the term "subjects," when applied to persons owing allegiance to a foreign country, may properly be construed in the same sense as the term "citizens" or "inhabitants" when applied to persons owing allegiance to the United States.
The word subject is defined in Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014) as follows;
SUBJECT
subject (səb-jəkt) adj. (14c) 1. Int'l law. Under the power of dominion of another; specif., owing allegiance to a particular sovereign or state . 2. Exposed, liable, or prone . 3. Dependent on or exposed to (some contingency); esp., being under discretionary authority . 4. Referred to above; having relevance to the current discussion.
If you have that creation you are allowed to set the parameters or rules that revolve around that creation. You may not agree with this analogy, but think of it as your children. Your children were a creation between you and your spouse, mate, or significant other. you set rules in your home for those children to follow. To the powers that be you are considered a minor, and they are setting the rules of the house you do not know you live in. And, since you do not know the rules you scream and cry that it is unfair. You may say wait, I'm a grown man/woman, I am not a minor. According to 31 C. F. R. § 363.6 the word minor is defined as follows;
Minor means an individual under the age of 18 years. The term minor is also used to refer to an individual who has attained the age of 18 years but has not yet taken control of the securities contained in his or her minor account.
Congress has established rules that these minors or subjects must follow. In Ex parte (Ng) Fung Sing, 6 F.2d 670 (W.D. Wash. 1925) the courts states as follows;
Citizenship is a political status, and may be defined and the privilege limited by the Congress
that privilege is based on this created entity called a United States Citizen. The courts even admit this over an over as to what you are when you are operating under this entity. You are a special class of citizen. In United States v. Anthony, 24 F. Cas. 829 (C.C.N.D.N.Y. 1873), just a mere 5 years after the amendments were ratified the court states as follows;
"The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were designed mainly for the protection of the newly emancipated negroes, but full effect must, nevertheless, be given to the language employed"
The court goes to further say;
"The fourteenth amendment creates and defines citizenship of the United States. It had long been contended, and had been held by many learned authorities, and had never been judicially decided to the contrary, that there was no such thing as a citizen of the United States, except as that condition arose from citizenship of some state. No mode existed, it was said, of obtaining a citizenship of the United States, except by first becoming a citizen of some state. This question is now at rest. The fourteenth amendment defines and declares who shall be citizens of the United States, to wit, ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ The latter qualification was intended to exclude the children of foreign representatives and the like. With this qualification, every person born in the United States or naturalized is declared to be a citizen of the United States and of the state wherein he resides."
The key is the phrase, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The states are separate and distinct jurisdictions. They are considered at this time to be foreign jurisdictions. In the next article we will show how then word person has been used to create within that legal fiction a chattel slave and how the states are complicit in this. This subject of the Fourteenth Amendment and the intent of it is very deep. It had good intentions when the republicans of that day tried to end slavery. But, now the very document that was there to protect the former slaves has now been used to enslave us all, but it is by our consent. our consent is because we do not know the rules of the game.
Excellent post - something to chew on