The Law
Frederic Bastiat
(1801-1850)
Source: Excerpted by Larry Fischer
"… But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to
its proper functions… The law has gone further.. ; it has
acted in direct opposition of its own purpose… It has been
applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to
maintain… The law has placed the collective force at the
disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to
exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has
converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.
And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order
to punish defense… The law has been perverted by the
influence of two entirely different causes: … greed and
false philanthropy.
"… It is evident.. that the proper purpose of law is to use
the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency
to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law
should protect property and punish plunder… But, generally,
the law is made by one man or one class of men… This fact,
combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of
man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains
the almost universal perversion of the law. [This is how ] law…
becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. [It become
understandable] why the law is used by the legislator to
destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people,
their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by
oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done
for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in
proportion to the power that he holds…
"… You would use the law to oppose socialism? But it
is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists
desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists,
like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their
weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism,
how can it be used against socialism?…
CONCLUSION
Any denial of Counsel is an attempt to accomplish that which is
specifically prohibited by the U.S. and Florida Constitutions.
The Right
set down therein says nothing about only "court-approved counsel"
and
is in no way qualified.
The U.S. Supreme Court held, in Miller v Milwaukee, 272 U.S. 713,
715, that if a statute is part of an unlawful scheme to reach
a prohibited
result, " ... the statute must fail..." This was again upheld
in McCallen v
Massachusetts, 279 U.S. 620, 630. Legislators, neither Federal
nor State,
may restrict the Courts to "attorneys only" in order to effectively
deny
Counsel to any Defendant who evinces a desire to be represented
or
assisted by a "friend" in preference to an "attorney." What cannot
be
done by the front door cannot be lawfully done by way of the
back door.
Legislators who pass laws do not have to be attorneys nor do those
who execute the law i.e., Sheriffs, Governors, Presidents, etc.
Even the
Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court need not be licensed attorneys.
To
exclude the People from defending their "friends" in the Courts
turns the
said Courts into a playground for the legal establishment, and
is a
blatant violation of the Petitioner's Right to Counsel, due process
of law,
and equal protection under the law. Mr. Justice Brandeis said:
"Discrimination is the act of treating differently two persons
or things under like circumstances." Nat'l Life Ins Co. v
United States, 277 U.S. 508, 630.
As far back as 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court was concerned with
the unjust and illegal discriminations which were running rampant.
The
Court frowned upon law administered with an "unequal hand."
" ... so as practically to make unjust and illegal
discrimination
between persons in similar circumstances material to their
rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the
prohibition
of the Constitution." Yick Wo v Hopkins, supra
Therefore, the Courts cannot be the exclusive territory of the
legal
"elite corps" but must be open to all the Sovereign People alike--on
an
equal basis.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments also prohibit the denial of Counsel
of choice. Nowhere has the Petitioner or his predecessors delegated
such
restrictive power to the United States or to the States, and
if the Court
will closely examine the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, it will
find that the
Right to Counsel of choice, such as the Petitioner herein claims,
is also
secured in the penumbra of these Amendments, particularly the
Ninth,
which is protected in the States (against "practice of law" statutes)
by the
Fourteenth Amendment. Roe v Wade, 41 L.W. 4213 (1973); Shapiro
v
U.S., 641, 394 US 618 (1966); Griswold v Connecticut, 381 US
479 (1964).
In speaking of controlling Constitutional law as opposed to mere
statute
law, Chief Justice Marshall said:
"Those then, who controvert this principle, that the
Constitution
is to be considered, in court as a paramount law, are reduced
to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their
eyes
on the Constitution and see only the law."
And the Court concluded that:
"This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written
constitutions" Marbury v Madison, 5 US 137, 176
The United States Supreme Court also pointed out in this decision
that
in declaring what should be the supreme law of the land, the
Constitution
itself was first mentioned and " ... not the laws of the United
States
generally..."
The attorneys who sit in our State legislatures and our Congress
have
no right to pass laws which infringe or abolish our rights under
the
Constitution of the United States and such unconstitutional laws
which
purports to do so must be declared nul and void (Miranda v Arizona
p Supra
p. 491) and not binding upon the Courts.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED.
Manuel Zayas
The American Bar Association and the legal profession in general
consistently deny that the litigation explosion is anything to
worry
about - indeed they even deny that there is a litigation explosion.
At
least that's what they say for outside consumption. When lawyers
talk among themselves, it seems, it's a different story.
Pick up the January, 1996 issue of the ABA Journal and you can
read an article called "Protect Assets Before Lawsuit Arises"
by
business journalist Jon Newberry. The premise of this piece is
that
lawyers, as much as any other professional, can easily fall victim
to
warrantless suits. "Expanding theories of liability, disregard
for precedent
by judges and juries, and unpredictable damage awards all conspire
to
promote the pursuit of claims that might not have been considered
10
years ago," Mr. Newberry writes. One lawyer is quoted as saying,
"I
don't want someone to do to me what I do to people all day in
court."
The solution recommended by Mr. Newberry is for lawyers to shelter
their money overseas. He particularly recommends the Cook Islands
in the South Pacific, whose laws offer "stronger protection and
greater
control of assets than U.S. laws."
Let's see if we understand this: The ABA thinks the U.S. legal
system
is just wonderful, but is own members think the Cook Islands
do a better
job of preserving the rule of law? We can’t help thinking that
rather than
moving money offshore, a cheaper scheme to "protect assets" would
be
to pass tort reform in America. Maybe that way our legal system
can
someday measure up to the standards of the Cook Islands.
The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven
there will be no law....In hell there will be nothing but law,
and
due process will be meticulously observed.i
-Grant Gilmore, Age of American Law
That laws are made by the powerful to protect themselves is
fundamental. Lawyers who do not hire out to protect the powerstructure
have structured the laws over the centuries to provide themselves
a
good living more at the expense of, rather then in defense of,
those
they are pledged to protect. Once in place a social custom is
hard to
change. Let us hope the emerging societies can implement the
protective
aspects of law while avoiding its historic wasted social efforts.
Law is considered complex, mysterious, and incomprehensible.
An observant Yale University law professor, Fred Rodell, has
penetrated
the web of myths that protects these "defenders of our rights."
He began
his book, Woe Unto You Lawyers, by comparing law to religions
of
past ages,
In tribal times, there were the medicine men. In the Middle Ages,
there were priests. Today there are the lawyers. For every age,
a group
of bright boys, learned in their trade and jealous of their learning,
who
blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to
make
themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual
autocracy, guarding the tricks of its trade from the uninitiated,
and
running,
after its own pattern, the civilization of its day.ii
Jerold S. Auerbach, the renowned legal scholar, makes the
same comparison,
Law is our national religion; lawyers constitute our priesthood;
the courtroom our cathedral, where contemporary passion plays
are
enacted....Five hundred years from now, when historians sift
through
twentieth-century artifacts, they doubtless will have as little
comprehension of American legal piety as most Americans now
display toward medieval religious zeal.iii
Rodell adds:
It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us-our governments,
our business, our private lives....We cannot buy a home or rent
an
apartment, we cannot get married or try to get divorced, we cannot
die and leave our property to our children without calling on
the lawyers
to guide us. To guide us, incidentally, through a maze of confusing
gestures and formalities that lawyers have created....The legal
trade,
in short, is nothing but a high-class racket.iv
Using age-old methods of secrecy and mystification, the legal
profession has managed to place itself between the public and
many
normal functions of society. In the evolution of law, lawyers
have
continually expanded time and labor to increase the tribute they
collect from the public for the common transactions of everyday
life.
Their living depends on the rest of society accepting their claim
to
being useful. They must themselves believe and defend that claim
or
lose their moral right to compensation. Though viewed by both
themselves
and the public as necessary and productive, lawyers' work is
mostly
finding ways through the unnecessary maze of legal procedures
developed
by their predecessors. They are made indispensable because of
the
structure of law and thus many of their fees are only welfare
in an honorable
manner-honorable only because, as in most distribution by wasted
labor,
there is much sincere work done but little produced. Rodell again:
The lawyers-or at least 99 44/100 per cent of them-are not even
aware that they are indulging in a racket, and would be shocked
at
the very mention of the idea. Once bitten by the legal bug, they
lose
all sense of perspective about what they are doing and how they
are
doing it. Like the medicine men of tribal times and the priests
of the
Middle Ages they actually believe in their own nonsense.v
Law students may be more idealistic than the average. When they
later
practice law, most undoubtedly believe they are protecting peoples'
rights.
Yet so much of their work is unnecessary, absorbs such a large
share of
their clients' wealth, and impacts society so destructively,
it is hard to
maintain
the notion that one is dealing with good folks in a bad system.
Lawyers'
need to protect both conscience and income prohibits them from
becoming
conscious of their own redundancy.1
...taken from an e-mail circulated by ZOBOLI@aol.com in Jan. 2000
Those unfortunates around the world were helpless as they were
forced
to send their children to government indoctrination centers,
to be taught to
honor the state and the party in power, and to distrust and disrespect
the
traditional beliefs of their own parents. In America, they saw,
the schools
were controlled by the parents in local communities, who decided
what was
taught and what values were honored. The children in America
went to school
close to their homes, their parents stayed involved in their
learning and
parental involvement was welcomed by their childrens' teachers.
Peasants living in totalitarian bondage were forced to suffer
in
silence as their fellows were imprisoned, or had their meager
possessions
confiscated, for minor infractions of the law; while the rich
and powerful
members of the ruling party and the nobility escaped punishment
for the same
or even far more serious transgressions. Those unfortunates understood
that,
in a totalitarian society, there were two separate standards
of law, one for
the ruling class, and another for the common man. They wistfully
saw an
America in which all were equal before the law, and when inequalities
were
found, they saw Americans rise up and demand equal treatment
and fair play.
In those unfree societies, men were forced to earn a living in
the same
occupations practiced by their fathers and their grandfathers,
or were
assigned to jobs which the state deemed proper. Guilds and unions
restricted entry into new fields of endeavor. They found themselves
assigned
to roles in society and admitted to occupations, not on the basis
of their
skills or intelligence, but rather based on their heritage, their
ethnic
roots, or the color of their skin. For contrast they looked to
America,
where even the poorest child of any background could, with nothing
more than
hard work, dedication, and a bit of luck, rise to become among
the richest
of men, in any endeavor which he chose. In the booming, growing
nation of
America, anyone could try his hand at anything, without seeking
permission
and licenses from the grudging state.
In those monarchies and totalitarian countries, the farmers rarely
owned the land they farmed, the peasant lived where he was told.
Tenant
farmers and serfs spent their lives toiling for the benefit of
the lordly
landowner, being forced to turn over a full third or even a half
of whatever
they had produced. Their own families often went hungry because
the abundant
food they grew was not theirs to eat. And even when a man managed
to acquire
a small bit of land he could truly call his own, he knew that
at any time,
some powerful noble or some bureaucrat from some obscure state
committee
could show up at his door one day, and simply take what the peasant
had
labored to create. And he looked to America, where even the powerful
central
government was forced to obey strict limits on what property
could be
confiscated for public or private use; where even agents of the
government
could not simply demand entry into a man's home on a whim; where
even the
governmental police authorities, who had obtained a court warrant,
were
forced to first ask permission of the owner to enter.
Under those totalitarian dictatorships, the people understood
that they
lived their whole lives at the whim of the king or the state.
They
understood that their rulers could create new laws or abolish
old laws as
they pleased, obey or ignore the laws as it suited them, and
the people were
forced to suffer in silence under the new dictates and obey all
the rules
laid down for them. They, unlike their rulers, did not have the
luxury of
obeying or ignoring the laws and the rules at their convenience.
Those
people understood, as they looked to America, that the Americans
held one
supreme advantage: America had a marvelous innovation, a written
Constitution. That Constitution stood as a firm and unshakable
rock,
protecting the liberties of those lucky people who lived under
it, binding
and limiting even the most powerful member of the government.
That
Constitution could adapt to changing circumstances, but the real
glory of it
was that it could be changed only when the people themselves
decided that a
change was needed. It was the peoples' Constitution, it was not
the
government's Constitution, it was not in the power of government
officials
to ignore it as they saw fit, it was not in the power of the
black-robed
judges to change it as they deemed proper. And it was written
in plain
language which the people could understand, it did not require
the
intervention of legal specialists or judicial edict to tell the
people what
their Constitution meant.
For the past 222 years, oppressed people around the world sacrificed
everything they had to come to America for freedom. And for almost
222
years, they found the freedom and equality which they sought
when they came
to America. But then something changed. And today when those
new immigrants
look around them, what do they see? What do we see?
If we happen to live in an area under the control of a black-robed
autocrat who thinks that part of his job description involves
social
engineering, we see our children forced on buses for hours to
attend schools
miles from home. And more often than not, we see schools the
primary focus
of which is propaganda rather than education; which imposes course
material
in secret and hides the content of their teaching from parents;
which often
actively undermines parental authority, and family and national
traditions;
which invites police authorities into classrooms to encourage
children to
divulge family matters and which treats all children and their
parents as
potential criminals at the very least. We see government bureaucrats
intervening into the most private and fundamental family decisions,
in the
arrogant belief that they, better than a child's own parents,
know what is
best for a child. That a parent has strongly held cultural or
religious
beliefs against pre-marital sex or abortion is no impediment
to a government
bureaucrat teaching a child about pre-marital sex, procuring
birth control
devices, or even facilitating abortions for the child without
the parents'
knowledge.
We see children deprived of the unlimited career opportunities
which
are one attribute of a free society, and instead we see children
forced into
job preparation for careers selected for them by school bureaucrats
from
government approved lists. Some starry-eyed bureaucrats call
this School to
Work, some parents call it slavery to the state. And as if career
bondage
wasn't sufficiently offensive to people who pretend to love liberty,
many
states have taken involuntary servitude even further. Many now
require
students at government schools to perform unpaid work in service
to
government designated, ideologically driven "community service"
centers, as
a prerequisite to graduation. As these children reach adulthood,
they see
their educational and career opportunities further restricted
by government
licenses, and by special privileges on the basis of their heritage,
their
ethnic roots, or the color of their skin.
We see a nation where police authorities are permitted to smash
down
the doors of private homes without warning, and are permitted
to massacre
those living in that home if they try to defend themselves against
the
unannounced assault. We see the highest appointed law enforcement
official
of the government denouncing anyone who holds strong religious
beliefs as a
dangerous cultist, and enforcing her bigotry with armored assault.
We see private property confiscated by government bureaucrats
in a wide
variety of circumstances: when some politician decides that money
should be
taken from one person who earned it and given to another who
did not; when a
bureaucrat decides that some plant, animal, or insect is more
worthy of
living on a parcel of land than the human who owns it; when an
innocent
citizen makes the mistake of passing though a government check-point
while
carrying an amount of cash which some government bureaucrat thinks
may be
used for criminal activity.
We see that America continues to maintain two separate systems
of
justice, and far from trying to achieve equality, we learn that
certain
racial groups are not to be held responsible when they violate
the law,
because they are deemed to be victims of society; we see that
certain
powerful people are even respected when they violate the law
because they
are deemed more important than equality before the law; and we
see a nation
demanding that popular leaders be exempt from the Rule of Law
which is
applicable to everyone else.
We see a nation which has willingly sold its children into bondage.
A
study by the National Taxpayers Union has determined that the
average child
born after 1995 will pay 56.3% of his lifetime income in taxes
to all levels
of government. More than half of every dollar that child earns
during his
entire lifetime, in forced tribute to the all-devouring state.
And what do
we hear from the alleged representatives of the people, whenever
a reduction
is proposed in that tyrannical burden of taxation? Unthinkable!
The welfare
state must be fed! Entitlement spending must go on and go up!
More federal
programs are needed! Those who demand to keep more of what they
earn are
branded as selfish by high government officials, and members
of Congress act
as though we should thank them for allowing us to keep any part
of our
money.
And we see that the peoples' Constitution no longer belongs to
the
people, it now belongs to the lawyers and the judges who have
usurped the
role of translators. These translators tell us that our Constitution
says
things which no one else can see, that it means things which
those who wrote
it have specifically said it does not mean, and that the things
which our
Constitution does plainly say aren't really intended and are
therefore
without effect. And they mandate that we believe them, because
if we do not
they will take away our property, our freedom, sometimes even
our lives.
We pretend to care about our children, so much of what we do is
allegedly for our children, our politicians never tire of posturing
about
their good works for the benefit of the children. Yet we are
raising our
children to become a nation of serfs. Despite all we claim to
do for them,
we are robbing them of their most prized inheritance: their Liberty.
Two centuries ago, a writer observed that great democracies tend
to
last only a couple of hundred years, during which time they progress
through
the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From
spiritual
faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty
to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency;
From
complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependency; From dependency
back into
bondage. We are already in the last stage, and in our self-absorption,
we
don't even realize it.
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ
of
virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
-- Thomas
Jefferson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
BEVDAV@worldnet.att.net
CONGRESS ACTION Newsletter can be found with any web searcher,
and is available at: http://www.velasquez.com/congress_action/
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