Shadowkat09 wrote:Famspear – My good sir, I’m afraid you’re making an unwarranted assumption as to my persona. I never said that I was a “follower of Hendrickson”, as you put it. This subject merely interests me, and I am curious; hence, my association of myself with a cat.
No, I wasn't sure whether you were a follower of Hendrickson, so I didn't make that assumption.
Regardless, I do find something very intriguing about your post here. Am I to understand that you believe that the only thing that matters in the case of law is NOT the literal meaning of what’s written in the law books themselves, but rather what those who interpret them say that they mean??
Yes, that's what I am saying. That's how the U.S. legal system works.
I personally find that to be a very disturbing concept. For if that is so, why do we have the written law at all? What, then, is the difference between the legal system we have and that of the kings/dictators/tyrants of old?
You're missing the point. Your personal conclusion, or Peter Hendrickson's personal conclusion or my personal conclusion, about "what the law is" is not important. Someone has to decide. That someone is called a judge. That's how the U.S. legal system works.
What the judge rules the law to be is authoritative on
what the law is.
Your approach doesn't make any logical or practical sense -- in addition to being incorrect as form of legal analysis. To argue that you yourself, or Hendrickson himself, can somehow come to a "correct" conclusion about the MEANING of the actual written law, and that the judge can somehow be "wrong" about that same law, is a legally meaningless idea. The study of law is not analogous to the study of physics or astronomy, where you have reality separate from what the scientist concludes. In the U.S. legal system, the law literally is what the courts rule the law to be. Notice that I said RULE the law to be. And if a judge makes an error in a ruling, the "erroneousness" of that ruling is determined ONLY by that judge's ruling being overruled, or reversed, or vacated, etc., by a higher court. If the Congress doesn't like how a particular line of case law has developed then, in some cases, the Congress can simply change the statute (as Congress does from time to time).
I also happen to know that Mr. Hendrickson cites law and court cases in his book to support his argument. Please explain to me, then, how these can be completely tossed out the window, so to speak.
The problem is that the court cases he cites do not support his argument. Why? Because he does not cite the
holdings of courts - the actual
rulings of the courts. He takes what the courts SAID -- out of context -- instead of what the courts RULED, and then he argues that what the court SAID supports his position about what the law is - when what the courts RULED actually is contrary to what Hendrickson says the law is.
When you study court cases, you cannot focus on what the court "said." You must focus on the DECISION -- what the court RULED. This is fundamental to the concept of PRECEDENT, to the rule of
stare decisis.
It is Hendrickson's arguments -- not the court cases themselves -- that are being "thrown out." The court cases CONTRADICT Hendrickson, because a court case is important ONLY for what the COURT DECIDED, not for what the judge "said."
Hendrickson does not now how to analyze court cases, and neither, I suspect, do you. Further, even if Hendrickson were trained in legal analysis, he would not perform legal analysis correctly, because of another factor we can go into later.
I would also like to note that the charge upon which Mr. Hendrickson WAS indicted had more to do with whether he believed what he said on his tax forms, rather than what was actually on them. At least, as far as my research tells me.
Yes, and under the law, an "actual belief" is not necessarily a valid defense on the element of "willfulness," which is one of the elements that the prosecutor must prove in a federal tax crime case. One of Hendrickson's many errors is that he "believes" that his
actual belief that he is right about the tax law is automatically a valid defense. Mr. Hendrickson, like many tax protesters, does not understand the
Cheek doctrine.
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet