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Originally Posted by indio007
The United States is a corporation , the common law don't apply to fictions. That's the supreme court not me. The Constitution is a contract in and of itself. Common law only applies to the extent of the contract let's it.As a matter of common law. All rights rights and remedies can be waived except jurisdiction. Think about that for a second.
Have you heard of Erie v Tompkins? There is no federal common law.
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Yep. Everyone studies Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), in first year civil procedure class in law school. Suffice it to say, I know a lot more about this case than you do. Suffice it also to say, it's a case often misconstrued by cranks such as yourself.
What Erie was about, and what makes it a landmark case, is what law to apply in diversity cases in federal court. A diversity case is one brought in federal court where the plaintiff and defendant are from different states and the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000 (see 28 U.S. Code sec. 1332 for the current version of diversity jurisdiction). Diversity suits do not invoke the jurisdiction of the federal court on the basis of federal statute law or Constitution.
Anyway, prior to Erie, federal courts sitting in diversity cases had developed their own sort of "general federal common law" to apply to cases, especially in the traditonally common law-heavy areas like contracts and torts. Erie, decided in 1938, said that was improper. The decision in Erie is that where state law provides the cause of action upon which the suit is brought, then state law,
including the common law of that state as expressed through its appellate courts, is to be applied to the case.
Justice Brandeis' majority opinion said this (304 U.S. 64 at 78):
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Except in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the state. And whether the law of the state shall be declared by its Legislature in a statute or by its highest court in a decision is not a matter of federal concern. There is no federal general common law.
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Emphasis added. There is no federal GENERAL common law. He did not say that there is no federal common law at all. And there most certainly is federal common law, because there are certain types of cases...bankruptcy, for example...which can only be litigated in federal courts. And decisions of federal appellate courts interpreting the Constitution, statutes, treaties, etc. of the United States are most definitely a source of federal common law.
Bottom line...you need to stop believing what you read on websites run by promoters of pseudo-legalistic mythology and read the actual law. It won't make you a lawyer, but it will at least make you less susceptible to being conned into accepting one of their bogus theories.