Serf's Burps

[serfmaninthepolis]

This is why Parliamentary Supremacy is a dog-shit doctrine for people with stupid, tiny brains incapable of abstraction. Or, worse, they are full-on psychopaths who just go "heh heh, better hope we don't legislate YOU to death if we get the notion!"

Mate... Seriously... You cited a complete sociopath who thought parents should be allowed to starve their children to death as it's better than the horrors of having to pay taxes to fund a social safety net. I don't need lectures on morality from you.

The difference is that I don't actually support parliament passing laws that would result in deaths. I merely state the fact that they have the power to do so. The fact that they would all find themselves hanging from a lamppost on the corner of the street in case a certain little lady goes by is neither here nor there.

There really is no beginning to your understanding of how the UK system of government or its laws work is there?

It is a fact that the Parliamentary Army cannot be opposed by anyone---again, you are confusing law and fact.

It is a fact that parliament can pass an act that says X, but this does not address the question of whether that act is Law, unless you are, as you say you are, a parliamentary supremacist---which is a fine position, it is basically the only position you can take without becoming, basically, something like a Sovereign Citizen/Natural Law type.

I am not saying you are wrong, I am saying that it is obviously a silly position--like, I am not going to be told that Rothbard is a deviant, when his basic premise is "there are natural rights and wrongs." Like, we might disagree over what they are, but your position is that there is no such thing as a natural wrong, there are only acts of parliament, which I find to be more indicative of some sort of mental disorder than anything Rothbard wrote---he was also very much againsty things like air pollution as "aggression."

[serfmaninthepolis]

And then, you know, the state might convince your boy to chop his dick off and take puberty blockers---but that is the glory of hte state, we cannot have anything like common/natural parental rights, it would interfere with grooming.

Oh great... So now you're going to start with the transphobic bollocks are you? Why does that not surprise me?

What a vile, bigoted and terminally pig-ignorant waste of human DNA you really are.

"Grooming"? Grooming who for what?

This is another interesting way to approach the question of natural law. If Parliament enacted that you are a woman, does that mean that you are a woman, because Parliament can do no wrong?

[serfmaninthepolis]

If something was law in 1066, it is still law today unless parliament has altered it, that is your dogshit parliamentary supremacist view, so you need to either say when parliament altered, for example, the meaning of "fee simple" or you have to state a cut-off date upon which things prior to that are no longer valid as "law."

Clearly wrong. As perhaps you know, per common law all felonies were punishable by hanging. Not only was this the law in 1066, it persisted for hundreds of years after that date. Over the years, it even developed a name - the "bloody code". Are you really saying that, if someone charged with stealing a pair of shoes can't prove that Parliament specifically altered the penalty for doing so, he is liable to be hanged? Suppose he refuses to say anything? Well, then, to the gallows with him!

... you're retarded ... dogshit ... This is like arguing with retards

Keep it up and you'll be moderated - or just banned. First and last warning.

No, if he refuses to say anything, refuses to plead, they should stack weights on his chest until he pleads or is dead---then he may have the benevolence of being hanged to death instead of crushed.

[serfmaninthepolis]

This is like arguing with --------- who just bully people, you really have no idea how to form a persuasive argument, do you?

Serious question - how 'persuasive' do you think your own arguments have been so far? If you're here to convince us that there is another legitimate perspective on these questions of law, how many minds have you changed?

If that isn't your purpose, why waste time on composing these posts?

Well, it is sort of a hobby of mine, using the Internet to talk to people who I'd never socialize with (and who would never socialize with me) in real life.

I know what a University seminar on jurisprudence/philosophy of law goes like, because I took several, and it is not a scholarly argument to proclaim parliamentary supremacy and call anyone who argues otherwise an idiot. It just isn't.

What I find interesting about this forum is that you have people who claim to have worked in the bureaucracy who have basically a Gradeschool understanding of jurisprudence, that is, they basically learned in Grade 4 "Parliament is supreme and can do anything it can write down" (sort of like what Blackstone and Edward Coke say, they are wrong on this point, IMO) and then think anyone who doesn't understand things that way is like developmentally delayed and "didnt pass Grade 4 social studies" rather than that in Grade 4 what is taught is an oversimplification of reality.

Like, one guy here, longdog, has at least admitted he thinks parliament has the power to euthanize blue eyed babies if it legislates such, and in the UK there is no capacity for any court to stay the execution of such "primary legislation." This is partly what led to the development of codified "human rights" and other standards in international law, to which most countries are a party, after WW2, in order to address this obvious DEFECT in the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.

[serfmaninthepolis]

So the words represent mental states, not words, that is, like, the view that a degenerate computer program would have, a sort of Chinese Room style language processing, ala Searle.

Uh.... no. Searle's contribution to AI and natural language processing have been viewed as intellectual masturbation that bear no relevance to the real world. About his only contribution to the field was a flurry of attempts in the 1980's to patent algorithms using his philosophy that all failed. For those of you that don't know the Chinese Room Problem here ya go. Using google type in any phrase from Blackstone. Take the eleventh hit result and copy paste the second paragraph. Repeat as often as required, using random hits and paragraphs. The observer cannot tell that I am a computer program, a human being, or serfmanwhatever. BTW, Searle was a particularly nasty example of the academic who thinks he is as a god, something about being a scummy landlord, a little bit racist and would trade academic advancement for sexual favors.

It is not so much about the observer. You are in a room and someone slides a paper with chinese characters under the door. You show it to a computer that scans it and prints out another card with chinese characters on it, and you slide it under the door. This process goes on back and forth. The issue is not so much about the person on the other side of the door as you: you do not understand Chinese even though you are exchanging a syntactically valid series of signs in Chinese. The argument is than that, remove you, and this is all a computer can ever do, produce syntactically valid output that is devoid of semantics, meaning. Just as you do not "understand" Chinese, the computer does not "understand" Chinese.

And as soon as you allow something that is semantic, that is, words have meanings that are reflections of mental states (this is Aristotle's view in On Interpretation) then you have a very big problem with any sort of formalism, e.g. "Parliament enacted it, therefore it is law."

This is because the term "law" is going to reflect a mental state, it is not merely syntactical. So as soon as you admit that words are symbols of affections in the soul/mental states, then you are left with the problem of going "well, Parliament says X, whose mental state is that?" So you have that problem, of Parliament having no brain, and therefore no mind. You could say it is the "collected mental state" of the parliamentarians, but then you have the problem of representation of their electors, why should that be the case?

So as soon as you want to provide a merely formal means of saying "this is law," e.g. "it was enacted by parliament," this is the equivalent of a computation view, that law is the output of a specific sort of formal system, e.g. there is a syntax of enactment, that is, a bill is put into the "Parliamentary Computer," and it is read once, voted on, read again, voted on, read again, voted on, and then given Royal Assent. All of this is purely formal, syntactical, but if Searle is correct, this cannot be said to be, in and of itself, a sort of "understanding."

An AI could generate a bill, have 300 sub-AIs vote on that bill based on their syntactical analysis, do that three times, then submit the bill for royal assent to another sub-AI. But none of this would do anything to explain why that ought to be law, in a semantic sense, and the Parliamentarian's argument is 'syntax suffices for semantics, it is law because this is the formalism that creates law.'

The problems are very similar, if syntax is insufficient to generate meaning, then formalism (going through the motions of enactment) is insufficient to generate law---it might be necessary for some reason, but it can't be a sufficient account of law to say "this is the syntax for creating a law, what it means is irrelevant."

You are then left with two broad paths: one is the natural law/freeman/sovcit path that says there is natural law, and that formalisms are sometimes in line with that, sometimes not, and if they are not, the formalism has produced wrong/false law (e.g. a law allowing for the euthanizing of blue-eyed babies, or income tax, or whatever the freeman thinks is ultra vires the power of parliament), or you can take the anarchist turn and go 'law/ethics/morality are spooks or things that have no fundamental basis,' this is the view you might get in Max Stirner and other Anarchists, or, more recently, the American anti-foundationalist Richard Rorty.

I mean, the whole contention of the need for some body to have the power of doing absolutely anything that is physically possible, why does Parliament (or anyone) need that power? Why can't it be that there are certain things that while bodies can do them, they ought not ever do them? This bedrock dogma of parliamentary supremacy (this power has to be somewhere, so it is in parliament) has no evidence for it, it's just a dogma that the Parliamentarians hold, mostly for the purpose of enabling Parliament to stop the King from enforcing things that are ultra vires the power of the King, for the King cannot just cut off someone's head for any reason at all, but Parliament claims this power, which the King of England never had, except during time of war.

[serfmaninthepolis]

Sometimes this is probably legit, e.g. the state will take children who have cigarettes put out on their foreheads, but sometimes it's not legit, e.g. to make the children of poor people go to public school because children are not allowed to stay at home if mom and dad have to work, so it is de facto custody by the state for poors.

In the UK, of course, poor children only go to public school if they get a scholarship

That aside, in the UK, the state does not force you to send your child to school, though it does insist that she is educated. There are lots of home schooled kids out there. It doesn't have to be your home, or you that does the educating.

Furthermore, children below a certain age are not allowed to be left unattended for the same reason as you can't put fags out on them, both being abuse. If child protection laws amount to state custody of children, are you also arguing that the state has custody of animals because there are laws preventing cruelty to them?

And finally, the fact that when the state does take custody of children it goes through a lengthy legal process which the parents have rights in shows that it does not see itself as having custody as of right.

Animal cruelty laws have a fascinating history---I once attended a lecture by a prof who studied this very thing. In the 19th century, the rabble were learning about neurology and so forth and the idea came about that any sort of prohibition at all was simply a "nerve" issue, for example, if I think that I ought not eat My Lord, that is not a natural truth, it is simply something with which I have been conditioned, or which evolved over time, but just because it did, does not mean it should be permanent.

This sort of physicalism led the Aristocracy and Religious people to band together to extend the same rights they had (no cruelty to Lords, e.g. no breaking into their houses and eating them) to animals. Well, not quite, obviously eating animals was still allowed, but there was the notion that the rabble should be trained to think that beings have rights as beings, not merely due to the rabble having been conditioned in church to believe "thou shalt not steal."

This is, of course, contrary to the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, and it was very much an aristocratic/religious order that implemented animal cruelty laws, it was not the masses of Chartists, and subsequent incarnations deamnding anti-cruelty stattutes.

"And finally, the fact that when the state does take custody of children it goes through a lengthy legal process which the parents have rights in shows that it does not see itself as having custody as of right."

Of natural right? I doubt you will find any reference to any natural right to custody, it is going to be a statutory presumption, or a presumption from case law that does not at all talk about natural parental rights, because the very issue of modern parliamentary supremacy is that it is not even saying "parliament modifies or obscures natural right" but it is a denial that such right even exists.

[serfmaninthepolis]

Of course that is possible. Both cases do exist---if I have shoddy work done on my house, it is much easier to just withhold payment (presuming I gave something in earnest to make a contract) than it is for the tradesman to sue for what was agreed upon. If I refuse to pay, he is faced with going to court, something he may not be able to do, and something which a lawyer may not take on because it is "small potatoes."

But under the system you propose, if you refuse to pay, and he is unable to employ a lawyer, or to take the case to court himself, he has the option of bashing your skull in and taking the money, whether or not he is entitled to it. Would you consider this to be an acceptable outcome? If not, how would your proposed system avoid it?

You still haven’t explained how your proposed trials by combat are anything other than a means for violent thugs to get whatever they want, whether or not they are actually entitled to it.

Ultimately the Parliament is simply the biggest gang of thugs around. That is why parliamentary supremacy is such a dangerous doctrine: as soon as the Gang of Thugs in Parliament enact something it becomes "law" and, as so many kind UKers here have said, the UK COurts cannot review primary legislation.

This is, btw, pretty well acknowledged by most people who write about human rights or jurisprudence, very few would say 'what the Nazis did was completely acceptable because they had statutes to enable them to do it.' I mean, that is a view, but I once had a brief conversation with a Supreme Court of Canada Justice---I'd asked a question at a lecture, and he zoomed up to me afterward and asked "what do you think law is, anyway?" I rattled something off, and he said "remember, they had the rule of law in nazi Germany."

[wserra]

So long as serf continues to write off-topic nonsense, this is where it will wind up. If serf thinks this is somehow unfair, then s/he should start his/her own board.

[longdog]

I know what a University seminar on jurisprudence/philosophy of law goes like, because I took several, and it is not a scholarly argument to proclaim parliamentary supremacy and call anyone who argues otherwise an idiot. It just isn't.

What I find interesting about this forum is that you have people who claim to have worked in the bureaucracy who have basically a Gradeschool understanding of jurisprudence, that is, they basically learned in Grade 4 "Parliament is supreme and can do anything it can write down" (sort of like what Blackstone and Edward Coke say, they are wrong on this point, IMO) and then think anyone who doesn't understand things that way is like developmentally delayed and "didnt pass Grade 4 social studies" rather than that in Grade 4 what is taught is an oversimplification of reality.

Like, one guy here, longdog, has at least admitted he thinks parliament has the power to euthanize blue eyed babies if it legislates such, and in the UK there is no capacity for any court to stay the execution of such "primary legislation." This is partly what led to the development of codified "human rights" and other standards in international law, to which most countries are a party, after WW2, in order to address this obvious DEFECT in the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

[longdog]

This is another interesting way to approach the question of natural law. If Parliament enacted that you are a woman, does that mean that you are a woman, because Parliament can do no wrong?

There's no such thing as "natural law" only varying people's varying ideas of what it means. It's entirely nebulous and not recognised by the the courts for the very good reason that it is nebulous and what constitutes "natural law" depends entirely on who you ask. "Natural law" is, at best, a philosophical position. The one thing it isn't is actual law.

And no... Parliament couldn't enact a law which makes me a woman as my gender is not dependent on what parliament decides any more than my whippet being a whippet and not a Labrador is subject to parliament's say so. Are you really so catastrophically dumb as to think parliament has the power to change facts? Parliament could, if it so chose, pass an act defining Pi as exactly 3.00... But that's not going to change the geometry of a circle and if you use 3.00 instead of 3.142 you're going to get a wrong answer... No matter what parliament says.

Let me try to explain again in a way even somebody like you can understand...

Parliament has the power to pass any law it sees fit but it doesn't have the power to change reality. Empirical facts are not subject to what the law says and therefore any law that attempts to deny them will have no effect whatsoever except to make the people passing it look ridiculous.