What Is Public Law and Private Law,  Part Two

And Why You Need To Know The Difference

From the previous article, we have learned that the development of public law in the Union of states in America grew out of an adherence to the constitutional republic set up under the Constitution for the United States of America, which itself was based on the common law. That was the basis of law and how the government was run at its inception in 1781 (under the Articles of Confederation, which later combined with the Constitution) for the next eighty years up until about April of 1861 when by that time eleven southern states lawfully seceded from the union. From that watershed moment on, not only did the manner of law begin to change, but also the political system which ran the day-to-day business of government began undergoing a radical transformation. 

Serious students of the historical machinations behind these changes will find a great many interesting facts never taught them in school in a three-part treatise by The Informer entitled The United States Is Still A British Colony which talks about the hidden history behind the American Revolution and the so-called “Civil War,” and in a couple of scholarly essays on Lew Rockwell’s site titled “Was the Union Army’s Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act? An Analysis of President Lincoln’s Legal Arguments Against Secession” by James Ostrowski, and “A Jeffersonian View of the Civil War” by Donald W. Miller, Jr. If read with an open mind, you will find the facts stated in these pieces to be historically verifiable.

Getting back to an examination of the history of law, under the Constitution, the republic of the continental united States provided for legal cases in three separate categories (i.e. three types of courts): (1) at Law, (2) in Equity, and (3) in Admiralty or Maritime. 

In the first of these categories, law is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense, generally considered under the common law. In this context, law is viewed as being the judicial will of the majority within an organization or society providing for the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces, using law and the court to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain the right of each, in order that justice may be had by all.

Since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another, then the common force — law and the court — for the same reason cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. In other words, actual law (which goes unwritten) allows a person to do anything they want as long as they do not infringe upon the life, liberty, or property of anyone else. Also, within the context of the common law, law does not compel performance; something to keep in mind as we compare the types of law which can come into play in a legal action. 

The maxims of law, such as those proposed by John Bouvier in his 1856 Law Dictionary, simply reflect the common sense reasoning of the common law while also forming the basis for all so-called written “law” (or rather rules, regulations, ordinances, codes, and statutes).  It is interesting to note that today’s “laws” (ordinances, statutes, acts, regulations, orders, precepts, etcetera) are often erroneously perceived as law. But just because something is call a “law” does not necessarily make it a law.  There is a difference between what can be deemed “legal” between artificial persons and what is perceived as being “lawful” among natural men and women. In other words, while the artifice of government may deem an action “legal,” this does not necessarily mean that it was “lawful,” ethical, and moral.  And herein lies an important difference in how government views its rules for operation as opposed to how people may view these same rules as an abuse of natural law. 

The second of the categories, equity, is the jurisdiction of compelled performance (for any contract a person is a party to) based on what is fair in a particular situation. The term “equity” denotes the spirit and habit of fairness, justness, and right dealing during the course of regulating commercial intercourse between parties. A party has no rights other than what is specified in the contract. Additionally, equity carries with it no criminal aspects.

The third and final category, admiralty or maritime, involves compelled performance with the added element of a criminal penalty — a civil contract with a criminal penalty. 

When, in 1913, at the urging and heavy lobbying of the international banking community the federal government handed over currency creation to the Federal Reserve System (a private corporation), things began to change in terms of the legal implications of the institution being created in partnership with the federal government. All of a sudden, anyone endorsing the handling of the new currency (Federal Reserve notes as opposed to United States Notes, the latter being lawful money which by tradition was backed by substance, i.e., gold and silver) in any capacity at all came under admiralty law. The problem for the government to resolve was in how it was going to make a smooth transition to be able to deal with an issue that involved an admiralty jurisdiction on land without having to explain how this was at all possible by having to explain the admiralty connection of Federal Reserve notes. In other words, the endorsed use of these notes on land brought the admiralty jurisdiction onto the land of the common people, although the people were never informed of such (meaning it was not commonly known).

By 1938 a new system of law was being put in place to replace the old and familiar common law upon which our country was founded. This new system of law involved the gradual procedural merger between law and equity actions (that is, one court, rather than three separate courts, had jurisdiction over legal, equitable, and admiralty matters). In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the federal government was bankrupt. In order to deal with its creditors (in equity), Congress pledged all the government’s assets (all the land, housing, government buildings, the States and their legislatures and executives, the Congress, the courts, the Chief  Exectutive, and the future labor — gross national product — of the people) in mortgage to the international bankers to stave off foreclosure and default on the national debt. 

These events forced a change in the country’s system of law from public law to private commercial law, which was first recognized by the U. S. Supreme Court in the Erie Railroad v. Thompkins case of 1938, which, among other things,  stated that there was no longer “general federal common law.” This case marked the precedent wherein the procedures of Law were officially blended with the procedures of Equity. Prior to 1938, all Supreme Court decisions were based upon public law — or that system of law that was controlled by Constitutional limitation. Since 1938, all U. S. Supreme Court decisions have been based upon what is termed “public policy,” meaning according to equity wherein a party has no rights other than what is specified in the contract in question as well as compelled performance. And what contract might that be? The acquiescence to using a private currency (Federal Reserve notes) in the normal course of transacting business without conditional endorsement.

Public policy concerns commercial transactions made under the Negotiable Instrument’s law, which is a branch of the international law merchant. The legislation forseeing these changes can be traced back to House Joint Resolution 192 (HJR 192) approved in June of 1933 which states that it is against public policy for anyone to insist upon payment of a debt with substance or lawful money (i.e. gold and/or silver, or a currency backed by these precious metals).

What HJR 192 effectively accomplished was a shift away from the standard substance of the law, and law follows the standard substance of money which according to the Constitution is gold and silver. When Congress, acting under public policy, suspended the standard gold substance in “payment” of debt, this affected the way law dealt with certain matters. This meant that, similar to corporations, HJR 192 offered individual Americans an artificial connection (or franchise) to and relationship with the federal government outside the literal common law of the constitution. This shift occurred because everyone was given a quasi corporate privilege under HJR 192 of not paying their debts with substance, even though it is demanded under the common law of each state in the Union according to Article I Section 10 of the Constitution.  

In essence this means that the court now presumes by implication in the civil law — otherwise known as “operation of law” — that a charter (franchise) exists between parties, because people are voluntarily availing themselves of the privileges pertaining to HJR 192. Therefore these people come under a ‘quasi in rem’ jurisdiction of the civil law in order to regulate and control those who are outside the literal common law principles. Remember that under equity, “equity compels performance.” The law views unincorporated associations (such as the franchise relationship that individuals can have with government as mentioned above) as a derogation (discrediting) of the substance of the common law because it deviates from what is considered lawful payment by instituting a debt/credit system in its place. 

Now, is it clearer in your mind why it matters that you know the difference between public law and private law? And why you want to stay out of a private law court’s jurisdiction if you want a remedy for your traffic matter. 
 
If you would like to learn more about concepts of law so you can avoid the whole mess without having to “appear” in court, you can download our free ebook Common Law Remedy To Beat Traffic Tickets and learn about the secrets that the courts and legal profession don’t want you to know.
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If you’d like to learn more about the law and how it can serve you, don’t hesitate to check out our Articles on Traffic Law section. Discover some of the secrets of law that you’ve never been taught!

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