Legal Ethics and Reform




          Read the Federalist Papers originally written in 1787. There are 22 in
 all, numbered 86 to 107. Each Paper is about 2500 words long.
 The Papers can be found at www.constitutionalguardian.com on
 the internet.

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?…



 PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI

 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 following article is quoted from the Wall Street Journal.)

 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
 


 Hang All the Lawyers  - by Lee Taylor

I don't believe that there is any person in this country

 that completely and accurately understands our legal

 system. As you research our wonderful collection of

 laws, the more you find that any particular act is illegal

 at some point and under certain conditions. It has gotten

 so bad that we no longer have a system of justice, only

 contradictory laws. Why is it like this and how did it get

 this bad?

 There is only one group of people in this country that gets

 any direct benefit from a conflicting system of laws. The

 lawyers!

 We, the American people, have been electing lawyers to

 our legislative houses for over 200 years. Lawyers make

 the laws, verify the laws, judge the laws, judge the people

 who violate the laws, and charge as much as $400 per hour

 to give individuals their opinions of the laws!

 Our government is based on a system of "checks and balances".

 This means that no single person or group has absolute power

 over the country. And yet, who balances the lawyers?

 It has gotten so bad that these lawyers actually introduced a

 bill to outlaw "Lawyer Bashing" (jokes against lawyers) into the

 California State legislature in early 1995! Fortunately, it was

 laughed off the floor by the public before it could go anywhere.

 A few years ago a bill was brought before congress in Washington,

 DC to restrict political offices to lawyers! It died a quiet death when

 lobbyists threatened to leak the news to the public.

 What we, the American people, have to do is get control away

 from the lawyers who have perverted our government for their

 personal profit. The easiest way to do that is to replace the crooked

 lawyers in our government with honest business people. Check on

 the candidates during the next election and see for yourself who the

 lawyers are, and then vote for someone else. As William Shakespeare

 said, "First of all, we hang all the lawyers."
From: ZOBOLI@aol.com

Lawyers - a poem

 Law ... could still be as simple as the Ten, set down in stone away back when. Trial ... could still be a simple chain of events,  of un-embellished testimony and evidence.

 Alas ... simple Laws didn't provide enough bread,  to keep the old time Barrister's fed.

 So ... somewhere back in the mists of olden times,  port lawyers decided, "We can rake in more dimes!"  "If we write the Laws in such a way,  'The fools will have to pay our exorbitant fee,  if they want any chance of staying... Free!"

 Thus began our contorted Legal System,  ending any semblance of common sense or reason.  'Lawyers' ... had come upon the Earthly scene,  and from that day on... 'LAW'has become obscene.

 Lawyers ... are really a totally useless group.  Their only function ... to invent and dispense Bull poop. Spewing out reams of blarney and hocus pocus,  to ensure 'Truth and Justice'stay just out of focus.

 When Lawyers can't make enough in the Court,  they seek out the 'Employer of Last Resort.' They'll troll about for ANY political offers, too more lavishly swill from the Public coffers!

 Then ... to repay those who have financed their foray,  they enact whatever Laws ... their benefactors say. And to ensure employment for the next Lawyer crop, they enact ... yet another pile of Legislative Bull plop.

 Our whole Legal/Political system has gone out of control.  It has become overpaid people ... on Government dole.  "They" are given the rare opportunity to do some good,  and make the World better ... if only they would! .

OUR FRAGILE FREEDOM: Throughout the history of mankind, citizens

 having the benefit of living in freedom in their own country have been rare
 indeed around the world. Throughout the history of America as an independent
 nation, our country has stood as a beacon of freedom to the rest of the
 world, an example to those people living in oppression and servitude around
 the world, as an example of what could be. Down through the years, people
 suffering under the yoke of monarchy, fascism, naziism, socialism, and other
 forms of totalitarian slavery looked to the United States as a symbol of
 what could be.

 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/

 ====================================
 ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY
 DON'T VOTE FOR LAWYERS
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