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To: 4Zoltan

We are not under English Common Law.

We are not in England, we are not commoners. we are sovereigns. Our constitution has no provision for adoption of the laws of another nation; all of our laws must be passed by our legislative bodies.


104 posted on 08/27/2013 1:48:04 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: editor-surveyor
We are not under English Common Law. We are not in England, we are not commoners. we are sovereigns. Our constitution has no provision for adoption of the laws of another nation; all of our laws must be passed by our legislative bodies.

You do realize that much of our law is based on English Common Law, don't you? That much of the Constitution was based on English Common Law? That Justice Scalia frequently cites Common Law, and said

use British law for those elements of the Constitution that were taken from Britain. The phrase "the right to be confronted with witnesses against him" -- what did confrontation consist of in England? It had a meaning to the American colonists, all of whom were intimately familiar with my friend Blackstone. And what they understood when they ratified this Constitution was that they were affirming the rights of Englishmen. So to know what the Constitution meant at the time, you have to know what English law was at the time.

129 posted on 08/27/2013 2:20:21 PM PDT by sometime lurker
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To: editor-surveyor; nesnah
You are confusing the issue. Hamilton told us to look to the language of the English legal system to define the terms of the Constitution. There are lots of English legal terms in the Constitution. One of those terms is natural born.

Justice Scalia: "Now, my theory of what I do when I interpret the American Constitution is I try to understand what it meant, what was understood by the society to mean when it was adopted. And I don't think it changes since then."

"Now, obviously if you have that philosophy ... foreign law is irrelevant with one exception: Old English law, because phrases like "due process," the "right of confrontation" and things of that sort were all taken from English law. So the reality is I use foreign law more than anybody on the Court. But it's all old English law."

133 posted on 08/27/2013 2:29:47 PM PDT by 4Zoltan
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