LAW AND EQUITY
Howard Freeman, ca. 1990
"I send you out as sheep in wolf country.
Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
Matthew 10:16
The average person is not well informed on law. We sheep are amidst wolves and it is to our advantage to have knowledge, because Christ said, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." This is one area of truth that the schools deliberately neglect to their students, and few people know this. To test yourself, think, "Do I know the difference between law and equity?" The Constitution of the United States provides courts of law and courts of equity. How many of our fellow Christian sheep know the difference between law and equity? It is very important that you know it, because if you don't know it, some things that are called law are actually equity. You will find yourself puzzled in life if you don't know the distinction between these two words.
Law does not compel performance. In law, you are free to do anything you please provided you do not infringe upon the life, the liberty, or the property of any other person. It is moral law that is against stealing, murder, rape, etc. American law, law in general, deals with interference with the life, liberty, or property of some other person. The Bible would condemn you if you do those things and so would the law of our nation.
To see how law works, suppose you back out of your driveway and back into the side of a car parked across the street. The owner hears the crash, comes running out, and you step on the gas and drive away. If he knows who you are, he files a complaint against you and says you damaged his property. With that sworn complaint, a police officer comes and hands you a summons to appear in court. All this injured party has to do in court is to prove that it was your car that backed into the side of his car, and law will give him damages to the full extent of his injury.
That is the beginning and ending of law. Law doesn't go beyond that.
Then we come to where you will find what is called law – compelling performance. For example, we have just recently, in many states, enacted what is called a seat belt law. You are required to fasten the seat belt when you ride in your car, and failure to fasten a seat belt is a criminal offense and subjects you to a fifty-dollar fine. Now, who could you harm if you didn't fasten your seat belt? The only one who could be damaged would be yourself. It's your head that hits the windshield, not anybody else's. So you know instantly that this is compelled performance. That is not law.
Equity is the jurisdiction of compelled performance. Where does equity come from? Equity comes from contract. When you are under a contract, you can be compelled to perform according to the letter of the contract, and that is constitutional.
For example: A man wants a new roof on his house and wants it done by a given date and lists certain specifications. The builder agrees to do it, and both of them agree on a price and time, and sign a contract. Because of time requirements or for other reasons, the builder makes a change in the kind of shingles he uses, and the homeowner takes him to court. The judge looks at the contract and says, "It appears that you agreed to put cedar shingles on this house and you agreed to have the job done on this date. Is that right?" "Yes." "We find that you did the job, you had it done on that date, but this other term of the contract says that the shingles will be cedar. How do you explain the composition shingles?" The builder says, "Well, this fellow made an impossible situation for me. He set a deadline to have the job done and I couldn't get these that soon. Don't I have any constitutional rights around here?" The judge bangs his gavel and says, "You will not mention the Constitution in this court." The builder scratches his head and says, "What do you mean I can't mention the Constitution in this court? Aren't you sworn to uphold the Constitution? I demand my constitutional rights!" The judge says, "Shut up!" The builder thinks, "What in the world kind of court is this?" He says, "I couldn't get the cedar shingles." The judge says, "This contract says you will put those cedar shingles on by a given time. You didn't do it, so this court is ordering you to tear the composition shingles off the roof and put cedar shingles on as soon as you can."
The builder is compelled to perform to the exact letter of the contract and there is no excuse whatever. He has no constitutional right. This is an equity jurisdiction. It is compelled performance to the letter of the contract.
A judge in a court of law is under oath to support the Constitution of the United States, but a judge in a court of equity is a state-created god capable of determining good or evil, truth or falsehood, right or wrong. He has police powers to back up any judgment he makes, and judicial immunity against any proven error in judgment. So you have quite a different type of individual claiming to be a judge in a court of equity.
Let's see how equity works. I have a great big tree on my front lawn. Let's say that on some dark night, an act of God, a windstorm, uproots my tree and lands it right in front of my neighbor's house. My neighbor comes over and says, "Mr. Freeman, you've got to get that tree off of my front lawn. I can't get out of my front door. I had to go out the back door. And I don't want this delayed a long time, so get busy." I look at him and say, "Well, as long as that tree sat on my front lawn, it was my tree and my responsibility. But an act of God gave it to you. Now it's your tree and your job to get it out."
Well, we don't have any law that covers a situation like that. It's a dispute between two individuals. We could go before a chancellor in a court. When we do that, both of us have to agree to come under the jurisdiction of that chancellor who will determine fairness between us. We're both absolutely certain that we are dead right and the other is dead wrong. What is normally done is that both parties go to lawyers who each finds cases that agree with their side, and each lawyer is paid a retainer to try to win the case. Now we go into court and each lawyer cites cases that agree with his position. When all the case law comes before that state-created god capable of determining good or evil, truth or falsehood, right or wrong, he just decides to discard one set of cases and recognize the other set of cases. Then we pay our lawyers and leave.
How much simpler it would be if my neighbor and I had exactly the same dispute and agreed to sign a contract to make the next man who walks down the street a judge between us. We agree that each of us will give him ten dollars for ten minutes of his uninterrupted time, and when he has heard each side of the controversy for ten minutes, whatever that man decides is right, we will both agree to abide by. When that man hears us on this issue, it doesn't make a bit of difference to him whether we cite the Constitution or Supreme Court decisions or anything, because we have made that man a god between us. Being a god between us, his concept of fairness becomes law.
Equity means fairness, but it is fairness as the equitor sees fairness. Whichever way this man decides, we are under contract to abide by it and that contract is enforceable, so we can be compelled to perform according to that man's decision. You can see how much cheaper it would be that way than to go hire lawyers, pay the costs of court, and you've still got just a man who can choose between one viewpoint and another.
We are not born in an equity jurisdiction. We get into an equity jurisdiction by what we do. Normally we're in a law jurisdiction, and as long as we don't interfere with the life, liberty or property of anyone else, we'd never know government existed. It's only when we damage someone that law comes in. But in equity, we create a situation in which we need arbitration. In that situation, we are in a jurisdiction of compelled performance.
In recent years, the main enemies that have been bothering us have been the various agencies of the federal and state governments – bureaucratic or administrative agencies. At the lowest level of government, we have the administrative statutes which set all kinds of rules and regulations of our country. They call these things law, and they compel performance. Now, whenever there is compelled performance, there must be a contract, because there is no law in the United States that compels performance. The Constitution of the United States provides courts of equity and courts of admiralty, and these are courts of compelled performance. They will compel you to perform according to any contract that you are under.
When you see something like a seat belt "law," that isn't law. That's a contract. Well, now where and how did I get under a contract?
Generally speaking, the way that we get under it, but we've never been told, is that when we apply for a driver's license, we actually give up a right. You had a right at law to use the public "right-of-way." But you surrendered that right in return for a privilege, and said I would like, instead of the right to drive, the privilege to drive, so I apply for a driver's license. A license gives you the privilege to do something that would otherwise be unlawful. Since you give up the right to use it, then it would be unlawful for you to use it, so you ask for the privilege of using the highway. Now you have the privilege of using the highway and you set up a contract.
Remember, a contract always has three parts. The first part is a consideration. (For example, for the roof, the contractor must be paid.) The next part is the agreement. (The contractor says he will put the roof on.) The third part is the obligation. (The contractor must actually put the roof on.) The same applies in regard to driving on the highway. If you are driving as a privilege, then you must have entered a contract knowingly, voluntarily, and intentionally. So you gave up your right to use the right-of-way, you accepted a privilege, you proved that you wanted the privilege by applying for the privilege; now you have the obligation to obey the motor vehicle code to the letter. You see, that is the way that the motor vehicle code is enforced in our courts.
When a man goes into court and demands his constitutional rights, you can see why the judge just bangs a gavel and says, "You have no constitutional rights in this court. All I want to know is, did you or did you not buckle your seat belt? Are you guilty or not guilty? If it's guilty, the penalty is fifty dollars." So all the thoughts that you had of claiming your rights are foolish unless you realize that you didn't know you entered a contract. In fact, you thought you were compelled to get a driver's license. You didn't know your rights, and not knowing them you didn't claim them. But no contract is valid unless it is entered into knowingly, voluntarily and intentionally by both parties.
You can't sneak a contract onto somebody. Suppose I want a new roof on my house and write up a contract in which a certain contractor is obligated to put the roof on. I decide what the consideration will be but I don't tell him anything about the contract. Then I tell him, "You have an obligation to put a new roof on my house." He says, "Where did I get that obligation?" I show him the contract; "Here it is. It says that for this sum of money, you have an obligation to put a new roof on my house." But he says, "I didn't agree to it." And if he didn't agree to it, it's an invalid contract. I can't go into a court and enforce that because there are only two parts to the contract – the consideration and the obligation; he didn't agree to accept the consideration so he didn't have the obligation to do so.
When the state sneaks a contract onto us by cunning and we don't know these things, the Supreme Court has said that every legalism (that means anything the government does) will be presumed lawful unless timely and specifically challenged for its lawlessness. So if we don't challenge these contracts, they are presumed by all the courts of the land to be lawful contracts. Then the court has a duty to enforce that contract to the letter.
The things that I have been telling here are things that people generally don't know, and by not knowing, then whatever the politicians want to do, anything that they call law that they want to pass, if we don't challenge it, the courts have said every legalism, anything the government does, anything any agent or bureaucrat does is presumed lawful unless timely and specifically challenged for its lawfulness. It's presumed that you waive your right to make any challenges if you go along with it, so we must know what to do.
When a state comes after you, say in a traffic offense, the state is not coming after you under American law. This is something that few people realize. The complaint will say the State of Texas vs the individual, so you think that this must be a contract that was made between you and the state. Well, that might be so, but there is a strange thing about that. If the state comes after you for a violation of a contract with the state, that would be a civil action, because the enforcement of contracts between any two opposing parties is a civil action. It is not a criminal action. But the state would not be able to use its own courts because it is a party to the case and its own courts would be prejudiced in favor of the state. Therefore, it would have to go to a federal court to get a neutral body to judge the dispute. The state, knowing that, decided to call a traffic violation, even a parking offense, a criminal action. If you just park five minutes overtime, you are a criminal in the eyes of the state.
They have gone outside of American law. They are now into international law, because American law on a criminal violation gives you all the rights under the Constitution. They have to prove that there is a damaged party and they have to prove willfulness on your part. If you don't know what the requirements are, whatever they do is presumed lawful because you didn't challenge it. Every legalism will be presumed lawful by the courts unless timely and specifically challenged. Since you don't challenge, they are claiming a criminal jurisdiction over your person and it's a contract violation but it has criminal penalties. There is no criminal penalty to a civil action. Criminal actions have criminal penalties, but for civil actions, you are just compelled to perform according to your contract and there is no jail sentence involved.
Under international law, an admiralty jurisdiction enforces an international contract, in that they can impose a criminal penalty. What I'm trying to show you is that our state and federal courts today are not common law courts. They are admiralty courts and this is what most people don't know, and they don't realize how they got into that admiralty jurisdiction. When they go into a court, they make common law defenses and the judge denies every motion; everything they say is denied, denied, denied, and the prosecution wins every time. How is that so? You cannot make common law defenses in an admiralty jurisdiction.
If you are called into a court (state court on a traffic offense or federal court on EPA or OSHA or IRS or any other charge from an administrative agency of government), the courts today are all admiralty courts, unless you murder or rape somebody or rob a bank or do some other common law crime. If you commit a common law crime, you are brought into a common law court and are given all your constitutional rights, and boy, that court better be on its toes. That's why criminals can get off easy, but if we just violate some little ordinance of a state or the federal government, we get rough treatment and no rights at all.
Once you understand the system, you'll have no trouble understanding what they are doing. They are enforcing a contract upon you, and a contract is enforceable on the letter of the contract. If you don't question the contract and don't make a controversy at law, they're judging you on a fact issue. For instance, they charge you with not buckling your seat belt. All the court wants to know from you is did you or did you not buckle your seat belt, because this is a contract. Now, if you murder somebody, the court has to know a lot more. It's not only the fact that you murdered the person, but how did you murder him? Was it accidental? Were you just loading a gun and it went off and somebody just happened to walk by and got killed? In other words, in order to charge you with murder, they have to prove that you willfully murdered the person. But they don't have to prove that you willfully didn't fasten your seat belt. The question is, was your seat belt fastened or not. That's all they want to know.
The murderer is in a common law jurisdiction, but the seat belt is in an admiralty jurisdiction.
Originally, we had sailing ships that traversed the oceans. Suppose you were a silverware merchant in England and you wanted to send a shipload of silverware to America. If you loaded that sailing ship down with your silverware, there would be a lot of money invested. You wouldn't want to see that ship sink, or you'd be bankrupt. You are very fussy when you want a shipload of silverware to go from England to America. You would inquire of the shipping company how long the captain of the ship had been employed. How many ships has he lost? None. This captain has sailed the Atlantic two hundred fifty times, through all kinds of weather, and has never lost a ship. That pleases you. But suppose that captain gets out to sea and right in the middle of a terrible storm, a sail gets tangled up around the mast. The captain says to one of his men, "Get up there and free that sail." The man looks at the captain and says, "What do you think I am? Crazy? I'm not going up to the top of that mast in this storm. Wait til it calms down." But the captain knows that unless that sail is untangled now, the whole ship is going to be lost. What can he do if his crew won't go up and free the sail? He might be a good captain, but if his crew rebels, he wouldn't be able to command his ship the way he should. He might know that it is possible for a man to get up there and free that sail, but he's got to be able to compel performance upon his men because not many men would volunteer to go up there in a storm. What the king of England did was to give the captains of his ships the title admiral, and an admiralty jurisdiction over his crewmen. When a crewman came onto the ship, he signed on the ship. In signing on, he entered a contract that he agreed to obey that captain absolutely in anything the captain ordered. The captain was to be like the king. He had the king's power on that ship and he was to be obeyed without question. If a crewman refused to obey, he was sent to the brig. As soon as the sea calmed down and things were in order again, they took him out of his iron cage and brought him on deck. All the captain needed was one witness. The captain says to the witness, "Did you hear me tell that seaman to go to the top of that mast in the storm?" The witness says, "Yes, I heard you tell him to climb the mast and free the sail." "Did the defendant climb the mast to free the sail?" "No. He refused." "Guilty."
They stripped the seaman of all of his clothes and tied his hands together from the tips of his fingers to his elbows. A rope was thrown over the starboard bow and picked up on the port side at the stern of the ship, and on signal the man was pushed overboard. His fellow crewmen pulled on the rope, dragging him the length of the ship under the keel and up on the other side. It was a long way to go. He would do very well if he could hold his breath the full length of the ship. Few could do it. Most of them drowned. But even if he could hold his breath, when he had his arms tied to the elbows and with no clothes on, the barnacles on the bottom of the ship were like razor blades, and there was no way he could push himself away from them. The full length of his body was dragged along the barnacles. So even if he held his breath, when they got him out of the water, he bled to death. Either way, it was the death penalty for failure to obey the captain's orders at sea.
That is where admiralty jurisdiction had its origin – at sea. The admiralty jurisdiction is very severe. It upheld a contract violation with a criminal penalty, and the penalty for the most part was the death penalty.
That is much more severe than the enforcement of American contracts, because the enforcement of an American contract under American equity jurisdiction, any controversy over twenty dollars, can be settled with a jury trial. If you are dealing in American equity, you have a different situation and there is still no jail penalty, because that is a civil jurisdiction. Anything under international law comes under an admiralty jurisdiction which is still an equity jurisdiction, but it enforces international contracts, and in enforcement of international contracts, you have criminal penalties.
So the difference between American equity and admiralty is: American equity is merely contract enforcement with no criminal penalty. Admiralty is contract enforcement with criminal penalty.
The courts today are enforcing their statutes and ordinances under admiralty jurisdiction, but they have never admitted it and they don't want to admit it. All we need to do is to know that, and if we know that they don't want to admit it, we can arrange things so that in order to continue the case they have to admit it.
We have to remember that we are sheep in wolf country, and sheep don't attack wolves. They don't step on wolves' toes. They just act meek and polite. But they can accomplish their objective with the truth. They stay close to the truth. A sheep is safe in wolf country if he is close to his shepherd because the shepherd has the gun. If we are close to our shepherd, which is Christ, we are secure. But Christ said, "I am the Truth," so our shepherd is the truth. Christ said, "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free." If we are going to stay close to Christ, we need truth in the area of law as well as in the area of John 3:16. There is as much of Christ in two plus two equals four as in John 3:16, and as much of satan in two plus two equals five as in any other falsehood of satan. It is in the whole knowledge of truth that we are safe. If we don't have that knowledge, we are in danger. Too many Christians have a knowledge of salvation and not enough truth to save them when they come into contact with the wolves.
When you are brought into court, no matter what the administrative agency is, whether the IRS or for a parking ticket, you will be arraigned. The judge will say something like, "I see that your are in violation of Missouri Code 24-17 which says that every driver of a motor vehicle will have his seat belt fastened. You are charged with failure to buckle your seat belt. Do you understand the charge?" The answer you should always give is, "No." The judge will look down and say, "Please don't insult the intelligence of this court. Surely you know whether you had your seat belt fastened or not. What is it about this that you don't understand?" Now you reply, "Your Honor, the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution gives me the authority to know the nature and the cause of this action that is brought against me. And it gives you, the court, the duty to tell me the nature and the action that is against me. I do not understand the nature and cause of this action which is being imposed against me." The judge will say, "Well, what is it you want to know?" Ask the judge the easy question first. "Your Honor, is this a civil action or a criminal action?" As I explained, if it is the state coming after you, he has to say it is a criminal action, because if he says it is a civil action, you're in the wrong court. The state can't use its own court to judge its own cause; it would have to be in a federal court. "Thank you, Your Honor. Let the record of this court show that this action against John Doe is a criminal action." Now you have it set in the record. (At this point, I want to take another issue: that is that you never go into a court, even an arraignment, without a court reporter there. Before I am through, I will give you a little hint on how to get a reliable court reporter.) Everything that you are saying now is recorded in the court, so there will be a transcript made. Any appeal you make in any future court is made on the record that is established right now in this court. This is the place to timely and specifically challenge any unlawful action of government.
"Now, Your Honor, I have another question." You've already got the judge answering your questions, so he has showed that he can do it. Now you’re going to ask him a question he doesn't want to answer. "The Constitution grants two different criminal jurisdictions to this court. One is a criminal action under a common law jurisdiction, and the other is a criminal action that constitutes a condition of contract under the criminal aspects of an admiralty jurisdiction. Which jurisdiction, Your Honor, is this criminal action to be tried under?" The judge won't want to answer that. He will immediately get a little huffy and say, "If you want to know answers to questions of law like that, I advise you to get a licensed attorney. I'm not allowed to practice law from the bench. I can't give you legal advice." "But Your Honor, I don't think you would be violating your oath of office if you did your duty under the Constitution. You see, the Sixth Amendment gives me the authority to ask you this question and it gives you the duty to answer it. And I also have the right to defend myself in my own person without a licensed attorney. In order to intelligently defend myself, I have to know the jurisdiction that this court is operating under, because the rules of criminal procedure under a common law jurisdiction are quite different from the rules of an admiralty jurisdiction, so I need to know which jurisdiction I'm defending on if I am going to carry on this case. I don't think you would be violating your oath of office if you told me that."
We've tried this a few times and this is the way it operates. The judge will say, "I told you before, Mr. Doe, that if you want answers to legal questions like that, you get yourself a licensed attorney. I’m not here to advise you on the law." "Thank you, Your Honor. But let the record of this court show that this defendant, upon the authority of the Sixth Amendment, has requested the nature and the cause of this action against him from this court, and this court has failed in its duty to inform the defendant of the nature and the cause of this action against him, and that this court is intending to conduct a criminal action against the defendant under a secret jurisdiction that is known only to licensed attorneys." Ohhhh! That's in the record. That can't stay there. The judge has got to do something in a hurry. So he says, "It's a statutory jurisdiction, Mr. Doe. Now, I hope you’re satisfied." "Thank you, Your Honor. Let the record of this court show that this court is going to conduct a criminal action against John Doe under a statutory jurisdiction." Now you've set that in concrete in the courtroom. "But Your Honor, I have still another question. I never heard of a criminal action under statutory jurisdiction, but I would be happy to accept this if you would tell me where I can obtain the published rules of criminal procedure for statutory jurisdictions. Do you have a copy in your office that you could loan me, or could you tell me what law library has a copy of the rules of criminal procedure for statutory jurisdiction?"
There are no such rules, and they can't write such rules because there is no such thing as criminal action under statutory jurisdiction.
What usually happens at this point, and what did happen in a case in Colorado to a man who had been driving without a valid driver's license and without insurance on his car (he didn't mean to; he just let them run out and forgot about renewing them and got caught), the prosecuting attorney will get up and say, "I don't think there is enough merit in this case to waste my time and the court's time trying it. I move the case be dismissed." The judge says, "Case dismissed."
You see, they don't want to admit that they are operating under an admiralty jurisdiction. We can really, in a way, get away with murder, because even though we're licensed, we have Social Security accounts, etc.... – Suppose you come up to the IRS; you've got the same thing. When you go to the arraignment, they say you are charged with failure to file an income tax return under 26 USC 7203, which requires you to file. The judge says, "Do you understand the charge?" You say, "No," and go through this same procedure, and make them state the jurisdiction that this criminal action is to be tried under. They'll never want to tell you it's an admiralty jurisdiction, so before you get to that point, they'll probably drop the charges.
This is the way that we sheep can survive in this wolf country. We don't tell them what the law is; we just ask the right questions and get it in the record.
It's important to have a reliable court reporter. In some small county courts, the judge and the court reporter very often share the same office and they are buddies. They go out to lunch together. Now, if you have something on that transcript that is embarrassing to the judge, and since the court reporter serves at the pleasure of the judge, the judge could say, "Erase that; I don't want that showing in any transcript of my court. I lost my temper and said things I shouldn't have. Take that all out." His court reporter would erase anything the judge wanted and might even add something that wasn't there.
"Your Honor, this is a very important case to me. I undoubtedly will have to appeal it. As you know, my appeal has to be based on the record of the case, so I want the record to start right at this point. I brought my own court reporter so that the record can be established right now."
The judge said, "You can't bring people in here off the street to record in this court. If you want a licensed court reporter, we have one right here. We'll bring him in and he'll make the recording. I don't want anybody that you want to bring in here as the court reporter."
"I think she would qualify, Your Honor. Would you get up and introduce yourself?" The woman got up and told of all the years of experience as a court reporter in federal court. She was licensed by the state, and while she was reciting all of her qualifications, the judge looked at the county attorney. When she got through and sat down, the judge said, "Well, really, it wasn't necessary for you to bring that court reporter down here, because you're entitled to a speedy trial and we are booked up so heavily in this court, we're not going to be able to give you a speedy trial, so the case has been dismissed."
You can see how judges fear a court reporter that they can't control. It's very important to get a court reporter who does not owe his job to the judge of the court that you are being heard before. Once you have that type of court reporter, if you know how to ask the right questions, then everything the judge says is part of the record. If he states a falsehood, that is part of the record. He won't state a falsehood if he knows he has an accurate court reporter that he can't control. But he can't state the truth or he'd lose his license to be a judge, so he will have to duck it somehow, and most of the time he will remove the case.
Let's say worse comes to worst. Suppose the judge says, "Yes, this is a criminal action. It's a condition of contract to be tried under the criminal aspects of an admiralty jurisdiction." "Thank you, You Honor. Let the record of this court show that this criminal action against John Doe is a criminal action to be tried as a condition of contract under the criminal aspects of an admiralty jurisdiction." Now you've put his words right into the record, and if nobody objects, it's set. "Your Honor, you must realize that no court in America has an admiralty jurisdiction unless there is a valid international contract in dispute. I'm not aware of having entered any international contract, so I deny that such a contract exists. Will you have the prosecuting attorney prove before this court that there is a valid international contract in existence that I am a party to, and that my being a party to that contract obligates me to obey this particular statute?"
Now you've taken the bug off the judge's back and put it on the prosecuting attorney's back. The average prosecuting attorney can't explain it, and probably wouldn't if he could.
But suppose we get a real eager beaver prosecuting attorney that doesn't know that his license depends upon his concealing the truth. Suppose he spells the whole truth out. The way this admiralty jurisdiction on Mr. Doe was brought about is through the national dept. In 1933, when Mr. Roosevelt took office, the people demanded that he spend money, but the people didn't want to pay taxes for all the benefits that they received. Mr. Roosevelt was required to borrow bank credit for the amount of deficiency between his spending spree and the amount he was taking in in taxes. In making a loan from the international banking houses, he agreed to pay in gold coin. Years went by and he kept borrowing more and more on credit. Finally, in 1938, he had borrowed more than he had gold to repay the loans. So America was actually a bankrupt nation in default of its contract with the international bankers. Since the international bankers set up the international bar association and the international bar association set up the American bar and the American bar set up the state bars, the bar association decided that it would be best not to alarm the American people by telling them that they are all bankrupt, that they have lost all rights under the Constitution and they are now under a jurisdiction of compelled performance. Rather than tell the people that, and knowing how ignorant the people are generally, the lawyers figured out that if we just say we are blending the procedures of law with the procedures of equity, the American people wouldn't know what that was all about anyhow, and it sounds legal. Nobody would be alarmed and this was done. They did away with law, and the procedure of equity, which is also admiralty procedure, applies to our courts. What Congress has been passing since that time is not public law statutes, but public policy statutes. It's public policy in the interest of our creditors. For example, if you go bankrupt and you owe several creditors, the judge will find out how much salary you have or what your income is, and he will tell you to give each creditor so much per week or per month, and you will keep the rest for your own expenses. And you will do this or go to jail as being in contempt of this court. You've lost all your rights under the Constitution. The minute you go bankrupt, you're then in an equity court and the judge can compel you to perform according to what he deems fair.
When a nation has gone bankrupt, the people of the nation can be compelled to perform in the interest of the nation's creditors. So our Congress changed from a Congress representing the people passing law, to a Congress representing the bankers, passing public statutes in the interest of the bankers. As the bankers look over their slaves here in America, they see these fools running around in their automobiles and not buckling their seat belts, and a lot of them are getting killed, and dead men pay no taxes. We need these taxes for our usury. So Congress or legislatures, we want you to pass public policy statutes requiring all these fools to buckle their seat belts or pay a fifty-dollar fine. That is in our interest, but you can tell the people it's in their interest.
So, what we have had since 1938 is a series of what are called public policy statutes. These public policy statutes are in the interest of the nation's creditors, the international bankers. It is public policy that you are going to file an income tax return. The whole of 26 United States Code is private law, not public law. Private law is public policy in the interest of the nation's creditors. So, we have not the income tax act that was passed by the 16th Amendment. That ended in 1941. They temporarily allowed a direct tax on income. That was repealed at the end of the war, but they continued the income tax. This continuation is a public policy tax. It never was public law. It was an excise tax. The income tax originally was not a tax on income. It was a tax on the exercise of a government-granted privilege, and the value of the privilege is determined by the income of the person exercising the privilege. If you exercised no privilege, you didn't owe any income tax.
For example, there was a farmer who was buying his seed corn from an outfit in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that said, "The day your check arrives, your corn will be in the mail." He had sent the seed company a check (and the IRS had a copy of it). Immediately the seeds were in the mail to him. But it took ten days for that check to clear the banking houses before the seed company actually got the cash in their hand. So what this farmer had done in ordering his seed from this company in Winnipeg was to use the bank's corporate privilege of dealing in international commerce with equitable paper in a quasi-corporate manner. The privilege that he enjoyed was that for ten days, his money was still in his bank while he already had the seed. For having enjoyed this privilege of dealing in international commerce using the corporate privilege of a bank to deal in international commerce in equitable currency, he had the obligation to file an income tax return like any other corporation. By this, he became a juristic person.
Up until 1942, what was being collected was an excise tax. But using the same law, it's being continued under public policy statutes in the interest of the nation's creditors. But they don't want to admit that America is a bankrupt nation owing to the international bankers, so they don't want to tell you how you got into that contract situation.
Now the prosecuting attorney has spilled all this. "Mr. Doe, you are one of those who were represented by Mr. Roosevelt when he ran this country into unpayable debt, and you are responsible for that. Therefore, we are holding you hostage, more or less, to pay that debt. If you can't pay the debt, at least you'll pay the usury on it."
This is the way Mr. Doe came under the admiralty jurisdiction, and now he has failed to perform according to public policy statute. Therefore, this court is trying him criminally for a violation of an international contract. This would be a smart lawyer if he could tell that, and he would be a foolish lawyer if he told it because he would be giving away secrets that they don't want given away.
Now you've laid the whole thing on the line. Here is your defense under an admiralty jurisdiction.
“Thank you, Your Honor. Let the record of this court show that this court has declared that the criminal action against John Doe is a condition of international contract under the criminal aspects of an admiralty jurisdiction." Now this is set in the court record, and an honest reporter will not change it. This can go right to the Supreme Court. "Now, Your Honor, according to the Law Merchant Code, the very law that this contract was made under, there are certain things which state what constitutes a valid and an invalid contract. You realize, Your Honor, that no court has authority to enforce an invalid contract. I deny the validity of the contract that Mr. Roosevelt entered into with the international bankers. In the book Pied Pipers of Babylon, you'll find some of the Law Merchant Code statutes which state the conditions of what constitutes a valid contract under the law of nations or the Law Merchant Code. One of the things that you will find in there is that a valid contract must be an interest contract. A no-interest contract is invalid. (An interest contract is one in which the loaner [the banks] would have to have an interest in the survival of the secured property.) The international bankers had no interest in the survival of America. They gave no substance; they created credit out of thin air. And if America had survived, they would have gotten gold coin. But America didn't survive. We couldn't pay the debt. What do they own now? They own the nation. They own all the real estate. They don't care if America survives or fails. They win. Heads they win, tails we lose. There was no risk on the part of the international bankers in loaning that money. Actually, the loan was made upon an invalid contract by the very law of nations that it was made under. Therefore, America owes no debt; and if America only owes debt by an invalid contract, how can it be tied to an invalid contract and be under an admiralty jurisdiction to this court?
You see how once the truth is out, you've got it licked. But how do you get the truth out? Not by going into court and saying, "I stand on my rights under the Constitution. This court better obey the Constitution or I'll sue the judges." That's going out like a wolf, and we're only sheep in wolf country. The way that sheep can survive in wolf country is to know the truth and then come very meekly and get the truth into the record merely by asking questions, rather than by making statements. Play dumb; make them prove it. It's up to them to prove it. The Sixth Amendment gives you the right to know the nature and the cause of any action against you, and it gives the court the duty to tell you. So you just rely on that right to know, and if you ask it in the right way, timely and specifically, they've got to answer. If they don't answer, they've lost the case. If they do answer, they've still lost the case. If you handle it right, the one key here (and this is the hardest thing of all for us) is to get a court reporter who is honest and will make an honest transcript. The one thing that I have discovered is: don't ever use the court reporter, however licensed he may be, that belongs to the court in which you are being tried. Get a court reporter who is from a different area, who has no connection whatever with the judge of that court, so that every word that is spoken in that courtroom will be honestly recorded. When you get a transcript and bring it before a higher court, if the lower court made a mistake, you win. If anyone wants to fight the money issue, there is no better way to bring the money issue in than on a traffic offense. It's brought in in that manner because it's the money issue that gives that court a jurisdiction of compelled performance over you. Remember, wherever there is compelled performance, there has to be a contract.
Just ask questions very gently around that contract using your Sixth Amendment authority to ask the questions, and the duty of the court to answer them; build a record until you have the truth and the falsehood right in the same record. And then by faith we know that truth will always overthrow falsehood.
See also:
The Two United States and the Law – Howard Freeman
Common Law ~ Equity Law ~ Admiralty/Maritime
What Is Public Law and Private Law, Part Two
Common Law v. Statutory Jurisdiction
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3/26/15
Last update 20 November 2020