Finally, let us look briefly at the
courts, specifically with regard to the question of "booty". The following
definition of the term, "prize" is to be found in Bouvier's Law Dictionary:
"Goods taken on land from a public enemy are called booty;
and the distinction between a prize and booty consists in this, that the
former is taken at sea and the latter on land."
This significance of the distinction between these two
terms is critical, a fact which will become quite clear shortly.
Let us now remember that "Congress shall have the power to
make rules on all captures on the land and the water." To reiterate,
captures on the land are booty, and captures on the water are prize.
Now, the Constitution says that Congress shall have the
power to provide and maintain a navy, even during peacetime. It also says
that Congress shall have the power to raise and support an army, but no
appropriations of money for that purpose shall be for greater than two
years. Here we can see that an army is not a permanent standing body,
because, in times of peace, armies were held by the sovereign states as
militia. So the United States had a navy during peacetime, but no standing
army; we had instead the individual state militias.
Consequently, the federal government had a standing prize
court, due to the fact that it had a standing navy, whether in times of
peace or war. But in times of peace, there could be no federal police power
over the continental United States, because there was to be no army.
From the report "The Law of Civil Government in Territory
Subject to Military Occupation by Military Forces of the United States",
published by order of the Secretary of War in 1902, under the heading
entitled the Confiscation of Private Property of Enemies in War, comes the
following quote:
"4. Should the President desire
to utilize the services of the Federal courts of the United States in
promoting this purpose or military undertaking, since these courts derive
their jurisdiction from Congress and do not constitute a part of the
military establishment, they must secure from Congress the necessary action
to confer such jurisdiction upon said courts."
This means that, if the government is going to confiscate
property within the continental United States on the land (booty), it must
obtain statutory authority.
In this same section, we find the following words:
"5. The laws and usages of war
make a distinction between enemies' property captured on the sea and
property captured on land. The jurisdiction of the courts of the United
States over property captured at sea is held not to attach to property
captured on land in the absence of Congressional action."
There is no standing prize court over the land. Once war
is declared, Congress must give jurisdiction to particular courts over
captures on the land by positive Congressional action. To continue with:
"The right of confiscation is a
sovereign right. In times of peace, the exercise of this right is limited
and controlled by the domestic Constitution and institutions of the
government. In times of war, when the right is exercised against enemies'
property as a war measure, such right becomes a belligerent right, and as
such is not subject to the restrictions imposed by domestic institutions,
but is regulated and controlled by the laws and usages of war."
So we see that our government can operate in two
capacities: (a) in a sovereign peacetime capacity, with the limitations
placed upon it by the Constitution and restrictions placed upon it by We,
the People, or (b) in a wartime capacity, where it may operate in its
belligerent capacity governed not by the Constitution, but only by the laws
of war.
In Section 17 of the Act of October 6, 1917, the Trading
with the Enemy Act:
"That the district courts of the
United States are hereby given jurisdiction to make and enter all such rules
as to notice and otherwise; and all such orders and decrees; and to issue
such process as may be necessary and proper in the premises to enforce the
provisions of this Act."
Here we have Congress conferring upon the district courts
of the United States the booty and jurisdiction, the jurisdiction over enemy
property within the continental United States. And at the time of the
original unamended, Trading with the Enemy Act, we were indeed at war, a
World war, and so booty jurisdiction over enemies' property in the courts
was appropriate. At that time, remember, we were not yet declared the enemy.
We were excluded from the provisions of the original Act.
In 1934 Congress passed an Act merging equity and law
abolishing common law. This Act, known as the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedures Act, was not to come into effect until 6 months after the letter
of transmittal from the Supreme Court to Congress. The Supreme Court refused
transmittal and the transmittal did not occur until Franklin D. Roosevelt
stacked the Supreme Court in 1938.
But on March the 9th of 1933, the American people were
declared to be the public enemy under the amended version of the Trading
with the Enemy Act. What jurisdiction were We, the People, then placed
under? We were not the booty jurisdiction given to the district courts by
Congress. It would no longer be necessary, or of any value at all, to bring
the Constitution of the United States with us upon entering a courtroom, for
that court was no longer a court of common law, but a tribunal under wartime
booty jurisdiction. Take a look at the American flag in most American
courtrooms. The gold fringe around our flag designates Admiralty
jurisdiction.
Executive Order No. 11677 issued by President Richard M.
Nixon August 1, 1972 states:
"Continuing the Regulation of
Exports; By virtue of the authority vested in the President by the
Constitution and statutes of the United States, including Section 5 (b) of
the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended (12 U.S.C. 95a), and in view of the
continued existence of the national emergencies . . . ."
Later in the same Executive Order, we find the following:
". . . under the authority
vested in me as President of the United States by Section 5 (b) of the Act
of October 6, 1917, as amended (12 U.S.C. 95a) . . . ."
Section 5 (b) certainly seems to be an oft-cited support
for Presidential authority, doesn't it? Surely the reason for this can be
found by referring back to Exhibit 49, the words of Mr. Katzenbach in Senate
Report 93-549:
"My recollection is that almost
every executive order ever issued straddles on several grounds, but it
almost always includes the Trading with the Enemy Act because the language
of that act is so broad, it would justify almost anything.
The question here, and it should be a question of grave
concern to every American, is what type of acts can "almost anything" cover?
What has been, and is being, done, by our government under the cloak of
authority conferred by Section 5 (b)? By now, I think we are beginning to
know.
Has the termination of the national emergency ever been
considered? In Public Law 94-412, September 14, 1976, we find that Congress
had finally finished their exhaustive study on the national emergencies, and
the words of their findings were that they would terminate the existing
national emergencies. We should be able to heave a sign of relief at this
decision, for with the termination of the national emergencies will come the
corresponding termination of extraordinary Presidential power, won't it. But
yet we have learned two difficult lessons: that we are still in the national
emergency and that power, once grasped, is difficult to let go. And so now
it should come as no surprise when we read, in the last section of the Act,
Section 502, the following words:
"(a): The provisions of this Act
shall not apply to the following provisions of law, the powers and
authorities conferred thereby and actions taken thereunder (1) Section 5 (b)
of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended (12 U.S.C. 95a; 50 U.S.c. App.
5b)"
The bleak reality is, the situation has not changed at
all.
The alarming situation in which We, the People, find
ourselves today causes us to think back to a time over two hundred years ago
in our nation's history when our forefathers were also laboring under the
burden of governmental usurpation of individual rights. Their response,
written in 1774, two years before the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, to the attempts of Great Britain to retain extraordinary
powers it had held during a time of war became known as the "Declaration of
Rights". And in that document, we find these words:
"Whereas, since the close of the
last war, the British Parliament, claiming a power of right to bind the
people of America, by statute, in all cases whatsoever, hath in some acts
expressly imposed taxes on them, and in others, under various pretenses, but
in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties
payable in these colonies established a board of commissioners, with
unconstitutional powers, and extended the jurisdiction of the courts of
admiralty, not only for collecting the said duties, but for the trial of
causes merely arising within the body of a county."
We can see now that we have come full circle to the
situation which existed in 1774, but with one crucial difference. In
1774, Americans were protesting against a colonial power which sought to
bind and control its colony by wartime powers in a time of peace. In 1994,
it is our own government which has sought, successfully to date, to bind its
own people by the same subtle, insidious method.
Article 3, Section 3, of our Constitution states:
"Treason against the United
States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to
their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No Person shall be convicted of
Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or
on Confession in open Court."
Is the Act of March 9, 1933, treason? That would be for
the common law courts to decide. At this point in our nation's history, the
point is moot, for common law, and indeed the Constitution itself, do not
operate or exist at present. Whether governmental acts of theft of the
nation's money, the citizens' property, and American liberty as an ideal and
a reality which have occurred since 1933 is treason against the people of
the United States, as the term is defined by the Constitution of the United
States cannot even be determined or argued in the legal sense until the
Constitution itself is re-established. For our part, however, we firmly
believe that, "by their fruits ye shall know them", and on that authority we
rest our case.
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