Pr*ck. I provided the link so you could read the whole thing yourself. What I didn't post doesn't materially alter the meaning as did the section Jeff intentionally cut out of John Bingham's statement. (Which in fact, completely REVERSED the meaning.) Jeff is a pain in the @ss, and so I took a shortcut, figuring you could read the whole thing yourself if you wanted to. I presumed you had enough intelligence to notice the space between the excerpts and could surmise their purpose. I obviously overestimated you.
See the bolded part? He's saying that the separation from G.Britain did not throw us into a state of nature--i.e., lawless. If it didn't, then, clearly some body of laws (along with rights and obligations) applied after the separation. What were they?
Why on earth do you regard that passage as significant? Civil and Criminal laws which were not expressly abrogated by statute remained in effect. Madison says that very thing in the part I quoted. His larger point remains; The United States did not adopt, en masse, the common law of England.
I read the rest of your comment and think you are just producing noise. I don't even understand how you think you have a point to convey. I'm not going to spend any more time trying to figure out what you are trying to say.
Wow, really? You post an edited quote with no indication that you've edited it (sorry, simple paragraph spaces aren't enough--how are we to know those spaces weren't in the original?), and I'm a pr*ck for calling you on it? What a pathetic response.
I don't even understand how you think you have a point to convey. I'm not going to spend any more time trying to figure out what you are trying to say.
Surpassed, in the same post, by an even more pathetic response. Congratulations.
Look, it's clear that your only standard for the quality or integrity of an argument is whether you agree with it. Editing quotes is a horrible affront worthy of a boldface liar accusation--except when you do it because you've decided it doesn't materially alter the meaning. Supreme Court decisions are not to be regarded as valid, except when they are, depending on whether it suits your purpose. Jeff's quotes about the basis of citizenship are "argumentum ad numerum," but you're willing to say "I've got Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, Justice Washington, Justice Marshall, John Adams, James Wilson, Thomas Smith, John Armstrong, Samuel Roberts, Pickney, Henry Lee, James Otis, and various other sources too numerous to list." You're not consistent and you're not honest. And you have the nerve to name yourself after Diogenes!