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“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  - Benjamin Franklin

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill - The Second World War

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.  May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House on August 1, 1776.

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« The Key (#4) - Facts On Common Law | Main | The Key (#2) - First Estate Comprehensive Diagram »
Tuesday
Nov012011

The Key (#3) - 7th Amendment, No Court May Second-Guess (Review) A Decision of a Jury

From http://www.1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/common-law.htm

 

In true common law, there are no obligatory rules or precedents. A common law court (a court of record) has unlimited jurisdiction and is independent of government. All external factors are, at best, advisory, not obligatory.

 

The founding fathers understood all that. At his 1801 inaugural Thomas Jefferson said, "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." And he wrote, "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." [Letter, September 28, 1820.]

 

The self-correcting temporary imperfections of common law were preferrable to the entrenched imperfections of legislated written laws. That is why they chose the common law as the law superior to statutes and all other forms of law. They expressed that choice through the Constitution's 7th Amendment which essentially says that no court may second-guess (review) a decision of a jury.

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