COMMON LAW ~ EQUITY LAW ~ ADMIRALTY/MARITIME

Marilyn Barnewall’s Evidence of Corporate Governments at All Levels

Part Five, a further installment of Weekly Series For Constitutional Education

What have we Americans been taught by our government-subsidized education about the cause of our Revolutionary War?  Mostly we were told about the Boston Tea Party, the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, and other nice stories.

Many people say the Revolution began because of the Crown’s Declaratory Act which taxed tea, taxed stamps, forced colonists to quarter in their homes members of the English military, etc.  No.  It began because of the Rothschilds and their central bank system which, in today’s world, has driven us to the brink of another world war.

It’s true that all those things were great irritants, but the real core problem involved central banking – the Bank of England.  The colonists were forced by England’s King to use a paper currency issued by the Bank of England which demanded we use it – and we were to cede the colonial banking and monetary systems and pay interest to the Bank of England for using their paper money.

It sounds eerily like the way the Federal Reserve System in America works today, doesn’t it?  It is, in fact, quite similar.  So we must start with the assumption that what made our ancestors go to war in the 1700s is quite acceptable to Americans today because we have embraced what they were willing to die to prevent:  central banks and a fiat currency.

The Rothschilds were around when America was a colony of Great Britain and the fact that we were founded on the basis of Common Law troubled them.  Why?  Common Law is based on substance and rejects “colorable money” and “colorable courts.”  Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution describes for you what “substance” relative to Common Law means:  “Gold and silver,” not a meaningless fiat currency that has nothing backing it.  That is a currency with no substance and violates Common Law.

Prior to the forming of the Federal Reserve System, America’s Constitutional Republic required the nation to pay its debts in gold or silver and Rothschild banks did not loan gold or silver. Thus they did not like our newly-formed government which rejected a fiat currency with nothing backing it (what we have today).  As described above, the Rothschilds allowed the King of England to borrow paper money from them and got repaid in gold and silver.

Our Constitution declared gold and silver as the official currency of the United States of America and that’s why the Rothschilds financed the War of 1812.  They wanted America as part of the United Kingdom so they could expand into the New World their Bank of England scam.  They, of course, lost the War of 1812 and began seeking other ways to further their “we’ll loan you paper and you pay us back in gold and silver” scheme and began working on what we now have as a central banking system, the Federal Reserve, founded on December 23, 1913, 100 years after the War of 1812.

Our ancestors in North America began to revolt against the Brits but we had Common Law in the Colonies at the time.  When the King’s tax collectors made their rounds, however, they imposed Admiralty Law on the people.  It enabled them to arrest and quickly try people, denying to what were mostly Englishmen and women the common rights due them as citizens of the Crown.  That is what caused the Revolutionary War.

Perhaps the most interesting part of our history is that almost exactly the same thing has happened to us once again.  What’s the old saying about what happens if we don’t learn from history?  By incorporating federal, state, and county governments (because of the Federal Reserve’s colorable currency), the U.S. Government made it possible to remove the Common Law supported by our U.S. Constitution and implement a prostituted form of Maritime (or Admiralty) Law called Statutory Law.  Our ancestors refused to tolerate it, and it will be interesting to see if today’s society which seems more motivated by security and comfort than by right and wrong and liberty will accept the Law of the Seas.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s start with some definitions and let them guide you to an understanding of how we got in our current mess.  Only if we understand the history behind these massive problems will we be able to solve them.

To explain how the loss of Common Law robbed us of our independence and our Republic and how incorporating federal, state, and county governments made it possible, we need some definitions.  You’re about to get a graduate school crash course in business and finance:

JURISDICTION:     1. The right of a court to hear a particular case, based on the scope of its authority over the type of case and the parties to the case.  2.  Authority or control.  3.  The extent of authority or control.  4. The territorial range of authority or control.

While researching the jurisdiction of our courts, I came upon an article that was so well done, so easy for a non-lawyer to understand, I decided to reprint portions of it here.  One of the difficult things about writing both Parts I and II of this article is stating things in a way that can be understood by non-bankers and non-lawyers.  Since I’m not a lawyer, I particularly appreciated this article and recommend that you read it in its entirety at http://freedom-school.com/the-ucc-connection.html.  I am not publishing the entire article but just those parts that apply to this topic.

The article is a condensed story about a man named Howard Freeman and is based on a seminar Freeman gave in 1990.  The article is written in ham and eggs English and is not filled with legal terminology that forces you to look every-other-word up in a legal dictionary.  The following definition about Common Law, Equity Law, Admiralty/Maritime Law, Courts of Contract, Colorable Money and Colorable Courts, and the Uniform Commercial Code is taken from that seminar and the article written about it.

The Constitution of the United States mentions three areas of jurisdiction in which the courts may operate:

COMMON LAW

Common Law is based on God’s law. Anytime someone is charged under the Common Law, there must be a damaged party. You are free under the Common Law to do anything you please, as long as you do not infringe on the life, liberty, or property of someone else. You have a right to make a fool of yourself provided you do not infringe on the life, liberty, or property of someone else. The Common Law does not allow for any government action which prevents a man from making a fool of himself. For instance, when you cross over the state lines in most states, you will see a sign which says, ” BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELTS – IT’S THE LAW. ” This cannot be Common Law, because whom would you injure if you did not buckle up? Nobody. This would be compelled performance. But Common Law cannot compel performance. Any violation of Common Law is a CRIMINAL ACT, and is punishable.

EQUITY LAW

Equity Law is law which compels performance. It compels you to perform to the exact letter of any contract that you are under. So, if you have compelled performance, there must be a contract somewhere, and you are being compelled to perform under the obligation of the contract. Now this can only be a civil action – not criminal. In Equity Jurisdiction, you cannot be tried criminally, but you can be compelled to perform to the letter of a contract. If you then refuse to perform as directed by the court, you can be charged with contempt of court, which is a criminal action. Are our seatbelt laws Equity Laws? No, they are not, because you cannot be penalized or punished for not keeping to the letter of a contract.  (BARNEWALL NOTE:  You may have signed an insurance contract agreeing to always wear your seat belts (and, of course, your state requires automobile insurance coverage.)

ADMIRALTY/MARITIME LAW

This is civil jurisdiction of Compelled Performance which also has Criminal Penalties for not adhering to the letter of the contract, but this only applies to International Contracts. Now we can see what jurisdiction the seatbelt laws (all traffic codes, etc) are under. Whenever there is a penalty for failure to perform (such as willful failure to file), that is Admiralty/Maritime Law and there must be a valid international contract in force.

However, the courts don’t want to admit that they are operating under Admiralty/Maritime Jurisdictions, so they took the international law or Law Merchant and adopted it into our codes. That is what the Supreme Court decided in the Erie Railroad case (Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, Supreme Court, 1938) – that the decisions will be based on commercial law or business law and that it will have criminal penalties associated with it. Since they were instructed not to call it Admiralty Jurisdiction, they call it Statutory Jurisdiction.

COURTS OF CONTRACT

You must ask how we got into this situation where we can be charged with failure to wear seatbelts and be fined for it. Isn’t the judge sworn to up hold the Constitution? Yes, he is. But you must understand the Constitution, in Article I, § 10, gives us the unlimited right to contract, as long as we do not infringe on the life, liberty or property of someone else. Contracts are enforceable, and the Constitution gives two jurisdictions where contracts can be enforced – Equity or Admiralty. But we find them being in Statutory Jurisdiction. This is the embarrassing part for the courts, but we can use this to box the judges into a corner in their own courts.

CONTRACTS MUST BE VOLUNTARY

Under the Common Law, every contract must be entered into knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally by both parties or it is void and unenforceable. This is characteristic: It must be based on substance. For example, contracts used to read, “For one dollar and other valuable considerations, I will paint your house,” etc. That was a valid contract – the dollar was a genuine, silver dollar. Now, suppose you wrote a contract that said, “For one Federal Reserve Note and other considerations, I will paint your house….” And suppose, for example, I painted your house the wrong color. Could you go into a Common Law court and get justice? No, you could not. You see, a Federal Reserve Note is a “colorable” dollar, as it has no substance, and in a Common Law Jurisdiction, that contract would be unenforceable.

COLORABLE MONEY – COLORABLE COURTS

Colorable: That which is in appearance only, and not in reality, what it purports to be, hence counterfeit, feigned have the appearance of truth. Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition.

It is “colorable” Admiralty Jurisdiction the judges are enforcing because we are using “colorable money.”  Colorable Admiralty is now known as Statutory Jurisdiction. Let’s see how we got under this Statutory Jurisdiction.

UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE

The government set up a “colorable” law system to fit the “colorable” currency. It used to be called the Law Merchant or the Law of Redeemable Instruments, because it dealt with paper which was redeemable in something of substance. But, once Federal Reserve Notes had become unredeemable, there had to be a system of law which was completely “colorable” from start to finish.  This system of law was codified as the Uniform Commercial Code , and has been adopted in every state. This is “colorable” law, and it is used in all the courts.

(End of text from Howard Freeman’s seminar. See Part 6 of Marilyn Barnewall’s series next Monday)