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March 03, 2014, 06:21:29 AM |
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I came across some interesting topics regarding the United States Court System. The claim is that US Courts have been operating under the jurisdiction of Admiralty since 1938. I'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around this and it would be nice if anybody here can clarify the implications of this...
A few interesting quotes I stumbled across.
"Any law which would place the keeping and safe conduct of another in the hands of even a conservator of the peace, unless for some breach of the peace committed in his presence, or upon suspicion of felony, would be most oppressive and unjust, and destroy all the rights which our Constitution guarantees." Pinkerton v Verberg, 78 Mich 573, 584; 44 NW 579, 582-583 (1889)."
“The right of trial by jury in civil cases, guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment (Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 US 90), and the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment (Presser v. Illinois, 116 US 252), have been distinctly held not to be privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by the States, and in effect the same decision was made in respect of the guarantee against prosecution, except by indictment by grand jury, contained in the Fifth Amendment (Hurtado v. California, 110 US 516), and in respect of the right to be confronted with witness is, contained in the Sixth Amendment. West v. Louisiana, 194 US 258. In Maxwell v. Dow, supra, where the plaintiff in error had been convicted in a state court of a felony upon information and by a jury of eight persons, it was held that the indictment, made indispensable by the Fifth Amendment, and the trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, were not privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as those words were used in the Fourteenth Amendment… the decision rested upon the ground that this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not forbid the States to abridge the personal rights enumerated in the first eight Amendments, because these rights were not within the meaning of the clause ‘privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States.’ …We conclude, therefore, that the exemption from compulsory self-incrimination is not a privilege or immunity of National citizenship guaranteed by this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by the States…"
“…it is possible that some of the personal rights safeguarded by the first eight Amendments against National action may also be safeguarded against State action, because a denial of them would be a denial of due process of law… If this is so, it is not because those rights are enumerated in the first eight Amendments, but because they are of such a nature that they are included in the conception of due process of law.”
(Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 98-99, 29 S.Ct. 14, 53 L.Ed. 97.)"
Anybody else know anything about this?
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