From: 4:44 PM Subject: [CourtofRecord] Fwd: Various Case QuotesTo: CourtofRecord@yahoogroups.com Ed sent this to me, and I'd like to share this with everyone. Al --------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CourtofRecord/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: CourtofRecord-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: 1:05 PM Subject: Various Case QuotesTo: Al Thompson Al, Here are a few Quotes that are rather glaring and on point with our problems in the courts of today. ere are a couple teaser cases. Much more can be found at the URL given. Note: Rice says, "the system views us as vessels" to be effectively regulated in the maritime and admiralty jurisdictions. I assume he is speaking of our "strawman" because Admiralty does not have jurisdiction over the person (in personam) http://www.supremelaw.org/ref/citation/citation.htm Admiralty "The technical niceties of the common law are not regarded. . . .", 1 R.C.L. § 31, p. 422. "A jury does not figure, ordinarily, in the trial of an admiralty suit. . . the verdict of the jury merely advisory, and may be disregarded by the court." 1 R.C.L. §40, p. 432. "[The] rules of practice may be altered whenever found to be inconvenient or likely to embarrass the business of the court." 1 R.C.L. §32, p. 423. "A court of admiralty. . . acts upon equitable principles." 1 R.C.L. §17, p. 416. "I concur with my brethren in sustaining the decree below, but cannot consent to place my decision upon the ground on which they have placed theirs. I think it high time to check this silent and stealing progress of the admiralty in acquiring jurisdiction to which it has no pretensions. Unfounded doctrines ought at once to be met and put down; and dicta, as well as decisions, that cannot bear examination ought not to be evaded and permitted to remain on the books to be commented upon and acquiesced in by courts of justice, or to be read and respected by those whose opinions are to be formed upon books. It affords facilities for giving an undue bias to public opinion, and, I will add, of interpolating doctrines which belong not to the law. "I have now said a great deal on this subject, and I could not have said less, and discharged the duty which I feel I owe to the community. I am fortifying a weak point in the wall of the Constitution. Every advance of the admiralty is a victory over the common law; a conquest gained upon the trial by jury. The principles upon which alone this suit could have been maintained are equally applicable to one-half the commercial contracts between citizen and citizen. Once establish the rights here claimed, and it may bring back with all the admiralty usurpations of the fifteenth century. In England there exists a controlling power, but here there is none. Congress has, indeed, given a power to issue prohibitions to a district court, when transcending the limits of the admiralty jurisdiction. But who is to issue a prohibition to us, if we should ever be affected with a partiality for that jurisdiction? "I therefore hold that we are under a peculiar obligation to restrain the admiralty jurisdiction within it proper limits. ". . . (t)hat in case of contracts it has no jurisdiction at all in personam, except as incident to the exercise of its jurisdiction in rem." J. Johnson, concurring remarks in Ramsay v. Allegre (1827), 12 W. 611, 614. "(B)y attempting to introduce the admiralty jurisdiction of the civil law,. . . a foundation is laid for interminable conflicts of jurisdiction between the courts of the state and the Union. "It is vain to contend that the 7th Amendment will be any efficient guarantee for the right, in suits at common law, if an admiralty jurisdiction exists in the United States commensurate with what is claimed by the claimant in this case. Its assertion is, in my opinion, a renewal of the contrast between legislative power and royal prerogative, the common and the civil law striving for mastery; the one to secure, the other to take away, the trial by jury, judicial power must first annul the 7th Amendment or judicial subtlety transform a suit at common law into a case of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, before I take cognizance of such a case as this without a jury." Bains v. The Schooner James & Catherine (1832), 2 Fed. 410, pp. 565-566.