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Monday, March 1, 2010

The rest of the amendment

Two parts here. First, a few sections need minor fixes. Second, the second half is now presented.

First, the fixes. Bold is added text; strikethrough is removed text

Section 2:

A: People, or person, as used in the constitution, refers to natural people. It explicitly excludes robots, artificial intelligence devices, corporations, or any other created entity. The 10th amendment does not grant rights to these entities.
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As much as I'd like to leave that bolded section out, and claim that it's implied, I feel much better with it explicit. Courts have a history of not reading implications / implied conclusions of the constitution.

Section 2B has bad wording. It needs improvement, and I don't know how to write it better.




Section 2D is added:

D: People can, as a group, act with rights as if they were individuals. This does not mean that all groups of people, of any form, have all rights of people. It means that the people, or group of people, can take actions as individuals or as groups of individuals with the same rights. Note that a corporation is actually different than the group of people that are the owners/shareholders of that corporation.

The supreme court has ruled that people do not lose their rights just because they form a group; that's valid. That does not mean that all groups maintain all rights. A corporation isn't just a group; it's something more than, and different from, the group of people; as such it does not have the rights of people.

Section 4:
Section 4B is added:

B: The pretense of the courts that the government cannot be sued unless it agrees to be sued is in violation of the constitution, specifically amendment 1's guarantee of the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. This right is not lost just because the government is the cause of the grievance; in fact, such abuse, or claims thereof, of government power must be the priority investigation of the judicial branch.

I hate the thought that this is needed, as it seems obvious; yet apparently the supreme court felt otherwise.

*** Still needed: Something to address / deal with investigations of the judicial branch.
It isn't clear that the Judicial branch can police itself; given the claim that sitting judges are immune from suit, combined with judges that break the law for personal gain, means that there is a need to petition the government for redress of grievances of the judicial branch, and no branch of government that is currently able to handle such petitions.

Section 5:
The start of section 5 is changed:
Article One grants states "All legislative

Minor wording correction.

And now, the rest:

Section 6. Nature of common law

A. Common law existing prior to the adoption of the constitution that has not been overridden by either the constitution itself or any law passed by congress -- including regulations passed validly by regulatory agencies approved by congress -- is valid.
B. No common law has been created after that point.
- Article one prohibits judges from creating law
- The 14th amendment prohibits judges from ruling that prior judicial rulings must stand.
- While common law has judges determining what happens in a court room, we have jury trials, congressional control of the operations of the judiciary, and a constitutional requirement that overturning of a jury decision be done according to law passed by congress.
- Consistent with repeated rulings by appeals courts and the supreme court, Jury Nullification is valid. No judge may instruct a jury otherwise.



Section 7. Default regulation for interstate commerce

A. All interstate commerce is subject to federal regulation.
B. Federal regulation cannot permit something that the federal government has no authority to do.
C. Therefore, anything subject to any federal regulation -- including any interstate commerce -- cannot do anything that the federal government cannot do.
D. Restrictions imposed on the federal government by the constitution therefore applies to any interstate commerce.
- No interstate commerce may require the adoption of private law. No forced contracts may create anything that behaves as a law.
- This does not apply to negotiated contracts, provided that any base law being overridden is acknowledged as such.
- No interstate commerce may violate the constitution, nor override any rights of the constitution.
- Interstate commerce between people is not subject to the limitation of federal authority, as the 10th amendment grants that authority to the people. However, it is still subject to the laws of the federal government, any regulations passed by the federal government, and the laws of all states involved.

E. The 10th amendment grants all authority for actions prohibited from the federal government, and by extension from interstate commerce, to the states and the people.
- State law, applied uniformly, affects all contracts where one of the parties is inside the state.
- The pretense that the only state laws that apply are those of the originating party's state is void. Parties have the ability to not contract with someone in another state. By choosing to enter into such contract, all parties agree to the laws of all involved states.


Section 8: Existing constitution

A: In all areas where this amendment simply clarifies or validates the existing constitution, even to the extent that it overrides any precedents of rulings of the Supreme Court, this is not considered new law, and has full retroactive validity, including actual and punative damage awards by courts.
B: Section 3B is recognized as being new; the rest of this amendment is intended as clarification of existing constitution, even when it overrides court rulings that are in violation of the existing constitution.


2 comments:

Rhandom said...

I don't know that explicitly disenfranchising artificial entities is necessarily a good idea. The wording as it currently exists also has unfortunate interactions with many religious beliefs.

The Archdruid Report has some good thoughts on bringing corporate entities in line with the law.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/01/housebreaking-corporations.html

Keybounce said...

Thank you; I will look at this and provide some discussion.