Rules and principles of statutory interpretation.
To interpret the meaning of a particular statute or statutory definition, one must use the same rules and principles of statutory interpretation which were used to compose such statute or definition.
There are eight basic rules and principles of statutory interpretation/ construction (from “construe,” not “construct”), the following three of which are usually sufficient to interpret the meaning of any statute (Underline emphasis added.):
(5) The rule ejusdem generis (of the same kind): when a list of specific items belonging to the same class is followed by general words (as in ‘cats, dogs, and other animals’), the general words are to be treated as confined to other items of the same class (in this example, to other domestic animals).
(6) The rule expressio unius est exclusio alterius (the inclusion of the one is the exclusion of the other): when a list of specific items is not followed by general words it is to be taken as exhaustive. For example, ‘weekends and public holidays’ excludes ordinary weekdays.
. . . (8) The rule noscitur a sociis (known by its associates): when a word or phrase is of uncertain meaning, it should be construed in the light of the surrounding words . . . A Dictionary of Law, 7thed., Jonathan Law and Elizabeth Martin, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 295.
Interpreting the meaning of the definition of the 28 U.S.C. § 3002(15) term “State”.
We cannot know the exact meaning of the above definition of “State” until we account for the following things: (a) there is a phrase of uncertain meaning in the definition, “the several States,” and (b) there is another 28U.S.C. § 3002 term in the definition, “United States.”
Regarding (a): Whereas, it is not possible to know the meaning of the phrase “the several States” until the meaning of “State” is determined, the rule that allows us to interpret the meaning of this phrase correctly is Rule 8, noscitur a sociis (known by its associates).
Applying noscitur a sociis, the surrounding words in the statute, i.e., “any of . . . the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, or any territory or possession of the United States, ”tell us that the phrase “the several States” means the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, and each respective territory and possession of the United States and no other body politic.
Regarding (b): Inspecting subsections (A), (B), and (C) of the above controlling definition of the statutory term “United States” at 28 U.S.C. § 3002(15),we see that the controlling subsection is(A): “a Federal corporation.”
Whereas, the only Federal corporation possessed of agencies, departments, commissions, boards, instrumentalities, and other entities, as those things are expressly listed in subsections (B) and (C) of the definition, is the District of Columbia, a Federal municipal corporation (see fn. 4):
- The meaning of the 28 U.S.C. § 3002(15) term “United States” equates to the District of Columbia; and
- The District of Columbia (a Federal municipal corporation) is also known as and doing business as “United States.”
Correct interpretation of the meaning of the 28 U.S.C. § 3002(14) term “State”.
The 28 U.S.C. § 3002(14) term “State” means any of the following: the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, Guam, American Samoa, Virgin Islands, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Palmyra Atoll, Wake Atoll, Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Midway Atoll, Sand Island, Kingman Reef, or Navassa Island[10] and no other body politic.
Notice that none of the members of the Union (e.g., New Mexico, Vermont, Oregon) are included in the meaning of the definition of the 28 U.S.C. § 3002(14) term “State.”
Correct interpretation of the meaning of the 28 U.S.C. § 3002(15) term “United States”.
Congress have created a special “United States” for use in all civil or criminal proceedings in all courts of the United States regarding an alleged debt allegedly owed to the “United States” (District of Columbia)—and each and every mention of “United States” in any such civil or criminal proceeding (as in United States District Judge, United States District Court, United States Marshal, United States Attorney, etc.) literally and legally means “a Federal corporation” and equates to the District of Columbia, a Federal municipal corporation.
“Citizen”.
With origins in ancient Rome, a citizen is a species of person (Latin, persona, mask for actors > per through, + sonus, sound), i.e., one who is the subject of certain rights and duties and has no unalienable rights, only entitlement to civil rights; citizens are inferior political subjects, not sovereigns; e.g.:
The term “citizen” has come to us derived from antiquity. It appears to have been used in the Roman government to designate a person who had the freedom of the city, and the right to exercise all political and civil privileges of the government. . . . Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1891), 206.
Based, however, on the unique political character of the sovereign authority in the American Republic, prior to introduction June 30, 1864, of the new statutory definition and meaning of “state” (and, by extension, “State” and United “States”) and advent of the purported Fourteenth Article of Amendment[11] to the Constitution (passed June 13, 1866, ratified July 9, 1868), “citizen” has a different and unique connotation in American law; to wit (Underline emphasis added.):
CITIZEN. . . .
In American law. One who, under the constitution and laws of the United States, has a right to vote for civil officers, and himself is qualified to fill elective offices.
One of the sovereign people. A constituent member of the sovereignty, synonymous with the people. 19 How. 404.[12]
“[J]oint tenants in the sovereignty” shanghaied politically to the District of Columbia.
Following the June 30, 1864, congressional conversion of the word “state” into a statutory term and July 9, 1868, adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment:
- The legislature of each member of the Union without voter approval introduces voter-registration legislation that, in addition to the requirement of residence within its borders, also arbitrarily requires that all such residents be a “citizen of the United States,” a stratagem perpetrated for the purpose of duping unsuspecting Americans into unwittingly constructively “agreeing” or “declaring” that they are a resident of the District of Columbia (see fn. 11);
- The constitution of each respective Union-member is revised and expanded, so as to include inordinate use of the common noun “State” instead of the proper noun that denotes each respective member of the Union (e.g., use of “in this State” rather than “in New Hampshire”; or “the State” instead of “North Carolina”); and
- Congress, for political purposes (see fn. 5), incorporate the District of Columbia (16 Stat. 419).
The reason the label “citizen of the United States” is bogus as regards Americans domiciled and residing without federal territory, is that the United States has no territorial legislative power anywhere in the Union, only the District of Columbia and other federal territory (Cohens, Caha, supra); the Union members themselves enjoy exclusive territorial legislative power over persons[13] and property within their respective borders (Pennoyer, supra).
Under the Roman Civil Law of the District of Columbia (“United States”), there is no substantial difference between a citizen and a resident.
Every “citizen of the United States” is either an actual resident of the District of Columbia or, though residing elsewhere, fraudulently construed to be a resident of the District of Columbia for legal purposes—and every time you claimed to be a citizen of the United States on any government application, e.g., Social Security, driver’s license, passport, voter-registration, etc., you unwittingly gave them further justification to abuse, defraud, and extort you.
Actual or legal residents of the District of Columbia are not entitled to engage in occupations of common right and are subject to the absolute, exclusive legislative power of Congress, i.e., all legislation within the District of Columbia.
If you neither physically reside nor own a business or real property within the exterior limits of the District of Columbia, the reason you are construed to be a legal resident of the District of Columbia is because (a) Congress transmuted “State” and “United States” into statutory terms whose ultimate meaning is the District of Columbia, and (b) you are ignorant of the fact that Congress, the United States Department of Justice, and all judicial officers of the United States construe all use of “United States” in all legislation (United States Statutes at Large, United States Code, amendments to the Constitution, etc.) to mean, ultimately, the District of Columbia: territory over which Congress enjoy absolute, exclusive legislative power (as conferred by the American People at Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution).
Authority for all bona fide legislative, executive, and judicial power: the Constitution.
Notwithstanding the degree of deceit and treachery of Congress, who, as evidenced by their legislative history,[14] are kept whores of the private Federal Reserve,[15] and before that its parent bank, the private Bank of England,[16] what will be hardest to understand for most people is that (a) the so-called U.S. Government is not the one implemented by the Constitution March 4, 1789, but the one incorporated by Congress February 21, 1871—the District of Columbia, a municipal corporation, and (b) with the exception of the president (explained in footnote 17, infra), all officers, employees, and elected officials of the “United States” are the personnel of said municipal corporation.
This is easily proved.
It is well settled that executive and judicial jurisdiction is co-extensive with the legislative power; to wit:The Judicial power is of a peculiar kind. It is indeed commensurate with the ordinary legislative and executive powers of the General Government . . . Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419, 435 (1793).
Those who framed the constitution, intended to establish a government complete for its own purposes, supreme within its sphere, and capable of acting by its own proper powers. They intended it to consist of three co-ordinate branches, legislative, executive, and judicial. In the construction of such a government, it is an obvious maxim, ‘that the judicial power should be competent to give efficacy to the constitutional laws of the Legislature.’[16] The judicial authority, therefore, must be co-extensive with the legislative power.[17] . . . [Underline emphasis added.] Osborn v. Bank of United States, 22 U.S. 738, 808 (1824).
[16] Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. Rep. 414.
[17] The Federalist, No. 80. Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. Rep. 384.
Every legislative, executive, and judicial officer of that certain government established by the Constitution must have constitutional authority for every official act he undertakes; to wit (Underline emphasis added.):
As regards all courts of the United States inferior to this tribunal, two things are necessary to create jurisdiction, whether original or appellate. The Constitution must have given to the court the capacity to take it, and an act of Congress must have supplied it. Their concurrence is necessary to vest it. . . . It can be brought into activity in no other way. . . . The Mayor v. Cooper, 73 U.S. 247, 252 (1867).” [Other cases that accord with this decision: Finley v. United States, 490 U.S. 545, 109 (1989). Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Co.,486 U.S. 800, 818 (1988); Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord,449 U.S. 368, 379-380 (1981); Kline v. Burke Construction Co.,260 U.S. 226, 233-234 (1922); Case of the Sewing Machine Companies,18 Wall. 553, 577-578, 586-587 (1874); Sheldon v. Sill,8 How. 441, 449 (1850); Cary v. Curtis,3 How. 236, 245 (1845); McIntire v. Wood,7 Cranch 504, 506 (1813).]
There being no provision of the Constitution that gives officers of a municipal corporation the capacity to take jurisdiction anywhere outside the territory occupied by the body politic of the subject municipality, no act of Congress can supply anything that creates jurisdiction for such officers anywhere else.
E.g., modernly, all counties are municipal corporations incorporated under the authority of the “state” / “State” / “STATE,” each of which is a statutory term the ultimate meaning of which in all American bodies of law is the District of Columbia, and the geographic area over which officers of each respective county (such as the sheriff and his deputies) legally have jurisdiction is the same as officers of the District of Columbia municipal corporation (such as the U.S. marshal and his deputies): all that territory lying within the limits of the District of Columbia and no other.
This is why Congress have decreed in stealth legislation at 28 U.S.C. § 564 that U.S. marshals (whose jurisdiction is restricted to the District of Columbia) may exercise the same powers as those a sheriff of the “State” (District of Columbia) may exercise in executing the laws of said “State” (District of Columbia); to wit:
United States marshals, deputy marshals and such other officials of the Service as may be designated by the Director, in executing the laws of the United States within a State, may exercise the same powers which a sheriff of the State may exercise in executing the laws thereof.
Congress populate a mirror-image government local to the seat of the national government established by the Constitution: Religious test oaths.
Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution provides (Underline emphasis added.):
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
The government’s position toward religion, as required by First Article of Amendment to the Constitution, is supposed to be one of strict neutrality; to wit:
The place of religion in our society is an exalted one, achieved through a long tradition of reliance on the home, the church and the inviolable citadel of the individual heart and mind. We have come to recognize through bitter experience that it is not within the power of government to invade that citadel, whether its purpose or effect be to aid or oppose, to advance or retard. In the relationship between man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position of neutrality. . . .” Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 226 (1963).
This point was reiterated by the Supreme Court as recently as June 4, 2018, in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U. S. ___ (2018) (Kennedy, J., delivering the opinion of the court); to wit (in pertinent parts, without page numbers, prior to the case going to press):
When the Colorado Civil Rights
Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires.
The State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed.
[T]he law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. . . .
The words “So help me God” are religious in nature; to wit (Underline emphasis added.):
The fact that religious words are common to many faiths — or are used repeatedly — does not diminish their religious meaning. Neither the numbing effect of repetition nor the brevity of a prayer extinguishes the religious nature of words such as “help me God.” Newdow v. Roberts, 603 F. 3d 1002 (D.C. Cir. 2010). (Kavanaugh, Cir. J., concurring.)
With the exception of the president, the congressionally mandated oath of office of every other individual who purports to hold an “Office or public Trust under the United States,” Constitution, Art. VI, § 3, requires a religious test—“So help me God”—as a qualification thereto and thereby automatically debars every such individual from holding any such office or public trust or exercising any form of power under the Constitution.
It neither comports with the First Article of Amendment to the Constitution nor is it in keeping with the doctrine of separation of church and state to (a) dictate over individuals who do not believe in God that such must swear an oath invoking the help of God in order to hold public office, or (b) make any law affecting any establishment of religion that professes a belief in God, vis-à-vis other establishments of religion which are founded on different beliefs—matters the Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down as violations of the First Article of Amendment to the Constitution; e.g. (Bold and underline emphasis added):
The appellant Torcaso was appointed to the office of Notary Public by the Governor of Maryland but was refused a commission to serve because he would not declare his belief in God. He then brought this action in a Maryland Circuit Court to compel issuance of his commission, charging that the State’s requirement that he declare this belief violated “the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States . . .” . . .
[T]he Maryland Declaration of Rights requirement before us . . . sets up a religious test which was designed to and, if valid, does bar every person who refuses to declare a belief in God from holding a public “office of profit or trust” in Maryland. The power and authority of the State of Maryland thus is put on the side of one particular sort of believers—those who are willing to say they believe in “the existence of God.”. . . Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 489-490 (1961).
[367 U.S. 488, 492] Since prior cases in this Court have thoroughly explored and documented the history behind the First Amendment, the reasons for it, and the scope of the religious freedom it protects, we need not cover that ground again. What was said in our prior cases we think controls our decision here.
[367 U.S. 488, 494-495] Nothing decided or written in Zorach [i.e., Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306] lends support to the idea that the Court there intended to open up the way for government, state or federal, to restore the historically and constitutionally discredited policy of probing religious beliefs by test oaths or limiting public offices to persons who have, or perhaps more properly profess to have, a belief in some particular kind of religious concept.
. . . We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally . . . aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.[11]
[367 U.S. 488, 495-496] The fact . . . that a person is not compelled to hold public office cannot possibly be an excuse for barring him from office by state-imposed criteria forbidden by the Constitution. This was settled by our holding in Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U. S. 183. . . .
This Maryland religious test for public office unconstitutionally invades the appellant’s freedom of belief and religion and . . . cannot be enforced against him.
. . . Reversed and remanded.
. . .[11] Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others. . . .[18]
Juramentum est indivisibile, et non est admittendum in parte verum et in parte falsam. An oath is indivisible, it cannot be in part true and in part false,” Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 3rdrev. (8thed.), rev. by Francis Rawle (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1914) (hereinafter “Bouvier’s Law Dictionary”), 2141, and the unconstitutional portion of government oaths (“So help me God.”) renders the entire oath unconstitutional.
Unless an aspirant to legislative, executive, or judicial “Office or public Trust under the United States,” Constitution, Art. VI, § 3, take the oath of office required of him by Congress, however, he will be barred from the office sought; to wit:
Clearly the Constitution permits the requirement of oaths by officeholders to uphold the Constitution itself. The obvious implication is that those unwilling to take such an oath are to be barred from public office. American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 414-415 (1950).
By deliberately installing a religious test in the oath of office of every prospective legislative, executive, and judicial officer, Congress have ensured that none holds a constitutional “Office or public Trust under the United States” (Constitution, Art. VI,§ 3) or is authorized to exercise “legislative Powers” (id. at Art. I, § 1), “The executive Power” (id. at Art. II, § 1), or “The judicial Power of the United States” (id. at Art. III, § 1), respectively, anywhere in the Union.[19]
No legislative, executive, or judicial officer of the United States (except the president) can or will cite any provision of the Constitution that gives him authority to do anything he does anywhere in the Union—because it does not exist.
Continued . . . .