bob wrote:
Apuzzo
dreams the dream:
Apuzzo wrote:
[The ALJ] did not accept my arguments because as far as he is concerned, there is no basis to my argument that the English common law was only selectively adopted on the state level and not at all on the federal level. <snip>
Uh, right Mario. There is no basis for your argument because, well, there is no basis for your argument.
This is another one of those annoying canonical absurdities that the Birfer Bar accepts as a matter of faith. And as such, it is impervious to any amount of argument, proof or appeal to competent authority.
While it is arguably true that the Federal trial courts (courts of limited jurisdiction) were never chartered as courts of general jurisdiction designed to decide common law causes of action, it is patently ludicrous to maintain "that the English common law was [adopted]
not at all on the Federal level."
I'd like to hear Mario's fanciful vision of the fledgling Federal courts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. What does he think they did when issues arose where the statutes were ambiguous or silent or words needed interpreting? Did they just make shit up?
Of course not. Consistent with the English tradition (which is unquestionably now the American tradition), they defered to the body of law that recorded how prior jurists had decided similar issues. That body of law was unquestionably the English common law and the guiding jurisprudential principle -- then and now -- is
stare decisis.
Has he never read more than a handful of Federal cases? Adherence to common law holdings abound and they are very often noted as such. They pervade the process by which words are parsed, phrases are given expanded meanings and problems are broken down into elements or parts.
But yet Mario would parse words, give new meanings to phrases and invent new elements -- all the while denying that common law has any place "on the federal level". It is a most convenient premise to make shit up. And that's about it.
OK, I know I'm babbling on with no prospect whatsoever of persuading Mario or any other birther lawyer that the truth is so obviously and palpably under his nose as to be just plain silly. It's like arguing with a child. Or an idiot. Or both.