No, no, I want you and David Merrill to do the work. I didn't make these claims, you guys did. Why should I substantiate the claims you're making? Why should I research the truth of your unsourced assertions for you?
The UCC is irrelevant, as has already been noted. Under the UCC definition of "money," Federal Reserve Notes are money. That definition has nothing to do with the constitution or lawful money: ""
Money" means
a medium of exchange authorized or adopted
by a domestic or foreign
government and includes a monetary unit of account established by an intergovernmental organization or by agreement between two or more nations."
Medium of exchange: "
Something, such as a precious metal, that is
commonly used in a specific area or among a certain group of people as money." Alternatively: "(Economics, Accounting & Finance / Banking & Finance)
anything acceptable as a measure of value and
a standard of exchange for goods and services in a particular country, region, etc."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/medium+of+exchange.
12 USC 411: "
Federal reserve notes...are authorized."
Federal Reserve Notes are certainly a medium of exchange, whether they are money or not, and they are certainly authorized by congress in 12 USC 411. Thus Federal Reserve Notes are a medium of exchange authorized by a domestic government--they are "money" under the UCC. Article 3 says that it is inapplicable to money. That's the end of it and there's no debate left on whether the UCC is applicable. You cannot invoke commercial law that declares itself to be inapplicable!
I'm not confused. You argued there was a distinction based on capitalization that was in error, and then you argued there was a distinction between "money" and "money of account" based on a note explaining that there was no distinction.
I never claimed any court declared anything unconstitutional and never gave any such implication. Interpreting statutes is not passing judgment on their constitutionality, so I don't understand why you just blatantly conflated them together. The act is perfectly constitutional, the only question is what "lawful money" means since there is no definition in the code. People have argued that lawful money doesn't mean Federal Reserve Notes and the courts have concluded otherwise.
No one's "waiting on statutes from Congress that cancel out the original statutes." Again, you're implying that there is some congressional project to make the code match court interpretations. This is not the case. Everyone knows that the code alone is not the law; any lawyer who's looking at a section of the code is going to look for court cases too. That's our system. The code is full of anachronisms, and the case law for some statutes spans hundreds of pages. You must consider everything together. In this case, the anachronism is meaningless and totally harmless, so there's no cause for anyone to care about its continued existence.
That doesn't alter the fact that these arguments were constructed as tax protest arguments. The tax issue is the Jesus to the Christianity of redemption; all of these arguments are centered around Federal Reserve Notes somehow not being taxable income.
The suggestion that a Federal Reserve Note can function as a United States Note is patently absurd. It has no statutory basis whatsoever--it is pure assertion, which is why the IRS is someday going to label this a frivolous tax argument and charge $5,000 penalties.
If you think that's what the statement said, you misread it. Here's the most recent statement, page 11:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2013/opdm052013.pdf. It says that $239 million in United States Notes is presently outstanding. In 2002, there were $263 million in United States Notes outstanding. The amount of United States Notes in circulation over the past 10 years actually
declined by $24 million.
Did you not read the article?
"Under the doctrine of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (193
, there is no general federal common law. Although
federal courts can create federal common law in the form of case law, such law must be
linked one way or another to the interpretation of a particular federal constitutional provision, statute, or regulation (which in turn was enacted as part of the Constitution or after)..."
....
it is universally accepted that the Founding Fathers of the United States,
by vesting "judicial power" into the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts in Article Three of the United States Constitution,
thereby vested in them the implied judicial power of common law courts to formulate persuasive precedent;
this power was widely accepted, understood, and recognized by the Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was ratified.[44] Several legal scholars have argued that the federal judicial power to decide "cases or controversies" necessarily includes the power to decide the precedential effect of those cases and controversies."
Here's Milam:
Here's you on the magical wash process: "That says Milam refused "lawful money". Which were the notes offered to him in exchange. What you don't understand is the Fed is required to make them non-negotiable upon demand...meaning they can't be fractionally lent. Milam refused his 50 but if he didn't the Fed would have to account for them in a very different way than elastic currency...The Fed agreed to exchange notes for notes and redeem it's right there in what you quoted. Maybe this is over your head but you should be able to put it together from what's here in this thread. Milam wanted to redeem and the Fed complied as per 12usc411 and not in specie according to the Legal Tender Laws. Then Milam refused the redemption that was offered which was FRN's with the obligation REMOVED making them NON NEGOTIABLE just like US NOTES."
How can you say Milam was offered Federal Reserve Notes "with the obligation REMOVED making them NON NEGOTIABLE just like US NOTES" based on this case? You cannot.
You think that's how court decisions work? Court decisions are based entirely on authority. When they mean to reference a case, they explicitly cite that case; when they mean to reference a statute, they explicitly cite that statute. When a definition is important, they source their definition. This is not accomplished by secret handshakes and subtle references of "well established definitions lawyers already know including old statutes and cases relevant." You know what that means in plain English? "The court didn't say what I needed it to say, so I'm just going to claim that surely they meant it even though they didn't say it." Bullshit.
How peculiar that your entire argument is based on adhering to the literal language of 12 USC 411, and yet when it comes to court court cases interpreting that section you want to totally ignore the courts' literal language in favor of some unexpressed meaning you cull from the opinions. \
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense for courts to hide the ball in their published opinions. The decision was based on the presence of coins, but why would the court say that, since everyone knows coins are lawful money and that white washes the whole transaction anyway? Obviously not. If they made a decision based on coins, they would have said the decision was based on coins.
You claim was that a court had upheld the supposed definition of "lawful money" you keep referencing. This court did not such thing, something you don't even seem to dispute in this post. The question the court answered was whether United States Notes were legal tender, and the answer was yes, based on the statute the court quoted. There is no attempt to define or distinguish either lawful money or legal tender in what you quoted from that court.
Indeed, congress has declared that about United States Notes, and congress has expressly declared Federal Reserve Notes "legal tender." None of that is in contention. The question of whether they are "lawful money" is not answered by statute because there is no definition of lawful money in existence, but the question has been answered by the courts, which say they are one in the same.
Thank you. Now what do you think this "civil boundary" is, then? Because it's still totally unclear to me. I think you may have confused civil versus common law with civil versus criminal law. My purpose in the text you quoted was to differentitate the two different systems of law that predominate the modern world. In a civil law system, the law is literally the statute: cases are decided case-by-case without reference to other court decisions, which don't have precedential effect. In a common law system, the law is the statute and court cases interpreting the statute; the court cases have binding and precedential force on the effect of the statute. We my point was that we live in a common law system--the code is not the absolute authority for what the law is, it is merely a part of the law.
