Sunday, February 23, 2014

LAW VS LIBERTY AND THE AMERICAN WAY.

Because many fail to understand civil jurisprudence, they don't understand the American Way. Most Americans will live from cradle to grave without understanding the system under which they live. 


Most Americans have heard these words — liberties, rights, duties, disabilities, liabilities, wrongs — but only through TV shows and movies or worse from public educators, you know, unionized school marms.

RIGHTWAY ROGER


Government sponsored marriages?  Meh.  There should be no federal or state government sponsored advantage or disadvantage to marriage.  The less government defines us, the more freedom we have. 


ME

Agreed. Law is about making uniform ruling for judges in sorting out matters of duty and right, or that what gets called civil jurisprudence.

If individuals can be held to duty to members of group, there exists only dictatorship. It is the essence of dictatorship — that some can enrich themselves from the outlay of more merely by having membership. 


LOST LEFTY LARRY

Government should keep their noses out of what is essentially a cultural institution.  The only exception is where civil liberties are being violated.

ME

But only government — politicians and bureaucrats — can violate civil liberties.

Liberties are acts of doing what one pleases, acts one can do without being prevented by law. The sphere of legal liberty is that sphere of activity within which law is content to leave oneself alone.  Liberty is when the law allows to one's will a sphere of unrestrained activity. Liberty is the absence of duty imposed upon oneself. Liberty is what you may do innocently.

Right is when law limits the liberty of others on one's behalf. Right is what others must do on your behalf, that is, their duty.

Power is what you can do effectively. Power is when law assists one actively in making one's will effective. 

One uses one's liberties without protest from the law. One enjoy's one's rights through law by controlling the acts of others over one's behalf. One uses one's powers with active assistance from the law in making itself the instrument of one's will. 

Liberties and rights are not the same. Right and power are not the same. These words are not synonyms under law. 

LOST LEFTY LARRY

No, civil liberties can be violated by both public and private entities.

ME

When an overzealous cop stops you from doing something for which there is no law, your civil liberty has been violated. Yet, if someone trespasses on your land, your right has been violated and the trespasser has failed in performing a duty not to trespass. 

If you live next door to Camp Pendleton and while practicing war games, marines wander on your land and blow up your cabin, those marines violated your civil rights but not your civil liberties. The Marines had duty to not trespass.

Say, you are walking on Venice Beach promenade taking pictures of a cop arresting a druggie and the cop tells you to stop and produce identification for which you refuse. Subsequently, on your refusal, the cop arrests you. Your civil liberties have been violated as there are no laws empowering police in California to make you produce I.D.

You are at liberty to be in California without I.D.

Only agents of government can violate your civil liberties. Liberty means absence of law, that which government otherwise has no concern.  

Private entities can violate civil rights, but not civil liberties. Others can violate your rights by failing to do duty to you. For every right there must be a corresponding duty. If you have the right to X, that means, someone else has the duty to perform X or refrain in their behavior from you getting to do X.


LOST LEFTY LARRY

What about the FLSA? Doesn't that protect civil liberties?

ME

FLSA is law and establishes rights and duties.  Law only ever establishes rights and duties. The absence of law is liberty.

FLSA establishes rights to such thing as overtime pay in particular occupations if such occupations involve interstate commerce. Employers have duty imposed upon then to fulfill rights of those granted and established under law, e.g., employers must pay overtime to those who have worked under overtime rules of the FLSA.

Employers who are obligated by law (have duty) to abide by FLSA and failing to comply open themselves to liability, which gives legal remedy to others. 

LOST LEFTY LARRY

Civil liberty is actually defined as the freedom of a citizen to exercise customary rights, as of speech or assembly, without unwarranted or arbitrary interference by the government which is an important distinction.

ME

Customary rights deals with customary law, which is any rule of action to which men voluntarily conform their action. It involves de facto observance. Customary rights of customary law do not have the nature of civil law since the essence of civil law is recognition of a state in the administration of justice.

Civil law, which is custom of the state, to a big extent finds basis on precedent customary law, which is merely custom of society.

Again, the absence of law defines civil liberty. The sphere of legal liberty is that sphere of activity within which law is content to leave oneself alone. Liberty means absence of law, that which government otherwise has no concern. 

LOST LEFTY LARRY

Just wow. The absence of law is the definition of anarchy not liberty. You're a damn anarchist! 

ME

Wow, just wow. The absence of law in the presence of government is liberty, not anarchy. 

Anarchy means no government at all. It means without (a) an overlord (archy). 

Maybe this will help you sort out your beliefs. 

One with disability lacks power to determine the legal relations of others (authority) or the ability  to determine one's own (capacity). When politicians don't establish law giving themselves authority (power) to do X and then do X against anyone, they have violated that one's civil liberty.

Sometimes politicians voluntarily bind their agency to the law, thus imposing duty upon their agents. If their agents fail to do their duty, they have violated the civil rights of others.

So for example, the U.S. adheres to its own employment law, which gives workers rights and imposes duties upon employers, in this case, the U.S. itself.

Anyone has the duty not to commit murder or not to defraud another. Anyone has liability in debt such that another who holds the right of action can sue for collection of said debt. 

In civil law, liability is right of action. In criminal law, liability is right of prosecution. 

Jurisprudence doesn't change because you want to misinterpret it your way.



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