Another Constitutional issue that each of us needs to understand is the issue of Individual Common Law Rights of We the People of the United States of America. This directly concerns the limits of authority of all branches of government over each of us as individuals: the Authority of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of Government.
As stated in the Declaration of Independence, we are endowed by our Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson placed great emphasis on the concept of Rights. He said we did not bring the English Common Law, as such, to this continent; we brought the Rights of Man. The reason why he said that is that it is from the Common Law controversies, all of which involved property, that all of our Rights have come to be recognized in the Law.
In a legal sense, Property is a bundle of Rights, a bundle of Powers, wherein one claimant to these Rights possesses these Rights to the exclusion of all other claimants to These Rights, as these Rights pertain to The possession, occupancy and use of a specific piece of property.
So, at Common Law, Rights is the name of the game.
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution of the United States of America because the Founding Fathers believed these Amendments should be added to avoid misconstruction of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America by Judges and to avoid an abuse of powers by Judges of The sort that had already, at that time, taken place in England and from which abuse of powers we had just fought, and won, a revolution to be free. (See the Preamble to the Bill of Rights. The original Constitution has it, and in some sources which print the Constitution, this Preamble is included.) This abuse had been committed by Judges who were not tied down by any written Constitution in England, and who had started to whittle away at the Common Law Rights in England and the Colonies, by their decisions, with the cooperation of the statutes passed by the Parliament and enforced by the Crown. This is precisely the combination of Executive and Legislative Equity (otherwise known as Roman Civil Law) which our Bill of Rights prevents and protects us from.
As example, the Constitution of the Iowa has its Bill of Rights, comprising Article I. The first two sections deserve special emphasis :
Section 1. All men are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights -- among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.
Section 2. All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people, and They have the right, at all times, to alter or reform the same, whenever the public good may require it.
So the Constitution of the State of Iowa for example expressly includes the Right of acquiring, possessing and protecting Property, although it is high on the Priority List of Common Law Rights. This is an example of a Constitution securing Rights which come from the Common Law.
Back in 1921 someone wrote:
It is not the Right of property which is protected, but the Right to property. Property, as such, has no rights; but the individual -- the man -- has three great Rights, equally sacred from interference: the Right to his LIFE; the Right to his LIBERTY; the Right to his PROPERTY. ...
The three Rights are so bound together as to be essentially one Right, To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.
Thomas Jefferson said:
"Our rulers can have no authority over [our] natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
This points up the significance of the requirement of the procedures of the Common Law that there be an injured party, that the injured party make a sworn complaint as to the injury that has been done to him by the alleged Defendant. That unless this is done, the Court does not have jurisdiction over the Defendant.
We have been told. from childhood, that we have unalienable Rights, and we do! Unalienable means that they cannot be taken from us, and that we cannot be forced to give them up. There are those who point out that, strictly speaking, we cannot even give them up voluntarily. However, if we submit to those who would rule over us, it is true that our Rights were not taken from us -- as Thomas Jefferson said, -- we have submitted to their rule. We have allowed ourselves to become their slaves. There is one important fact concerning slavery, of any sort, the institution of slavery depends upon the cooperation of the slaves! Without the cooperation of the slaves, there can be no slavery.
In Common Law Courts our Rights are protected. The Rules and Procedures of the Common Law Courts were established to protect our Property Rights -- to make it difficult for Property to be taken from someone without Due Process of Law. The Right to require That an injured party swear under oath as to damage or injury that he claims that you caused to him; the Right to a Corpus Delicti : The body of the offense: " the essence of the crime." : Under the Common Law, the Courts do not have an automatic jurisdiction. The Common Law Rules and Procedures specify certain steps, or procedures, which must be done, and certain things which must not be done -- all as a protection to the Rights of the Accused. And, as we have pointed out previously, Rights are inherent in Property, and Property is inherent in Rights. We have the Right to have our controversy, once the Common Law Court has acquired jurisdiction, tried before a Common Law Jury of our Peers, wherein the Jury has the authority to hear and decide questions of both Law and Fact. There is no monkey business of pretending that arguments involving the Law must be held outside of the hearing of the Jury and that their supposed only function is to hear and decide questions of Fact presented in evidence and that the Judge will tell them what the Law is !
As evidence that the Founding Fathers operated under the Common Law, in addition to the wording of the Constitution of the United States of America, the following was included in the instructions to the Jury in the first case ever tried before the United States Supreme Court, as a court of original jurisdiction, which means that a Trial by Jury was held in front of the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Jay presiding:
"It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumably, that the courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision. You have a right to take upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. "
STATE OF GEORGIA vs. BRAILSFORD . 3 Dall I (1794 )
Our Property Rights are inseparable from our individual Rights and our individual Rights are inseparable from our Property Rights. Both types of Rights are protected in the Procedures and Due Process of the Courts of Common Law.
The Bill of Rights in both Constitutions have to do with matters that the Governments, both of the United States and of the State, have to do with matters that the government, and its agents and agencies, have no authority over at all to enact statutes, or to issue rules and regulations, binding on the individual, dealing with such Rights as are included in the Bill of Rights. It should be emphasized that the Ninth Amendment includes all of the Common Law Rights which are not listed, or enumerated, anywhere else. In other words, the Bill of Rights are prohibitions against government at any level over the individual.
The Constitution authorizes Courts of Law and Courts of Equity. When the Constitution says Law, it means Common Law, because that's what the Founding Fathers meant when they said Law. In Courts of Law your Rights are protected by the Constitution and the Rules and Procedures of the Common Law, known as Due Process of Law; and the Bill of Rights was adopted to avoid misconstruction and abuse of powers, by the Judges; but in Courts of Equity, by the nature of Equity jurisdiction, you don't have any Constitutional Rights.
Within the existing Equity Courts the only rights you might acquire for yourself are the terrible so-called Civil Rights or the rights under the Uniform Commercial Code. These are much lesser rights than those of the Constitution because these latter are Natural God given rights whereas the former are granted privileges from an artificial government of bureaucrats.
You know you are in an Equity/Admiralty Court when an American flag is displayed that has a GOLD trim. The gold trim denotes military jurisdiction and not Common Law or Constitutional jurisdiction. Wherever this flag is flown the Constitution is NOT.
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