Thanks! Great quote. I have yet to finish reading it in it’s entirety. God knows, I have enough other stuff to read.
I’ve had Madisons versions of the Constitutional debates for many years. It’s interesting that each time a Constitutional question comes up, you can look at the notes and odds are you will find something very relevant.
It pays to remember something else about it, that at that time, there was no such thing as a “citizen of the united States”, there were only Citizens of the separate states. Congress had the power to make uniform rules of immigration, but it had NO power to command a State to accept somebody as a Citizen.
This issue is very heart-felt to me. I was born in upstate NY. My mothers family goes back as far as we can trace to the mid 1800’s in New York (immigrants from Germany). We have traced my fathers family back to a man born near the shores of the Hudson river in 1761, we have some evidence he was a Dutch immigrant.
I’ve been to Saratoga, I’ve been to Gettysburg, I’ve stood and looked down at Paul Revere and the Adams graves in Boston.
This is my land.
Now one other item. People keep making reference to “the common law” like they know something about it.
It is often described as “judge made law” which is more of a result than a principle.
Common law is law determined by the usage and customs of the time. It was universally believed to be superior to civil, statutory, or black letter law.
It works this way.
Somebody does you some kind of wrong, an actual injury or deprivation of your rights.
You file a pleading or writ with the court.
The court then either empowers a jury or finds out the facts and makes a decision.
Thus, there is no such thing as an ambiguous law or victimless crime under common law. (that last statement is not entirely correct, for instance prostitution has been recognized as criminal in most jurisdictions for a long time).
There are writs that deal with all sorts of things. Property, heredity, duties, etc.
An example would be there have been a few times in various states when the statutes against murder were accidentally allowed to expire or were repealed, that kind of thing.
But people were still tried, they were still convicted, because the law is not something that is written in the books, it is the things that are in our hearts, the way we try to live our lives as just and honorable men.
Statutes are EVIDENCE of the law. Court decisions are also EVIDENCE of the law.
Anyways, I’ve rambled on enough. If you can get a copy of “Common Law” by Roscoe Pound, it is well worth having. And you might be able to do a Google of “forms and action at common law” and get some good hits.
The common law was never intended to be generally used by our federal government on a national basis.
From the first legal treatise written after Ratification [and used as evidence in the recent RKBA Keller vs. District of Columbia case]
Fifthly. … That neither the articles of confederation and perpetual union, nor, the present constitution of the United States, ever did, or do, authorize the federal government, or any department thereof, to declare the common law or statutes of England, or of any other nation, to be the law of the land in the United States, generally, as one nation; nor to legislate upon, or exercise jurisdiction in, any case of municipal law, not delegated to the United States by the constitution.
Of the Unwritten, or Common Law of England; And Its Introduction into, and Authority Within the United American States
View of the Constitution of the United States
St. George Tucker, 1803
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See! Now you have even MORE to read.
[grin]
Yes. And I stumbled upon a letter from Jefferson to somebody, a while back, in which he basically took the view that the people in a local community had a right to determine whom might live there. I have not been able to relocate the piece. Have you ever come across it? The point is significant, if you remember that various communities were founded originally by people who wanted a specific haven for those who thought as they did on various subjects (ordinarily theological, of course, but the same principle would apply to other social issues). My point is that not only is all this "diversity" clamor on the Left ridiculous, we were actually expected to have a right to insulate ourselves from the idea of an undifferentiated humanity.
My current feature at my website Gulliver Discovers America touches on the point, as do many other items at my venue--some more directly.
As for your upstate New York heritage, I spent a number of summers in my youth at a camp run by a forestry professor from Syracuse, where we went without most of the modern conveniences, at a site only reachable by boat, where we had to wash & brush our teeth in the lake, etc., while learning what one needed to know to survive in the woods. So while I would not be very happy in the New York City area, I am well aware that there are very Conservative & congenial folk in some upstate communities.
Cheers.
Bill Flax