Before a territory could become a State all vacant land would be ceded to the USA. Then people could pay surveyors fees, about 1/2 a silver dollar per acre(as much as 4.50 silver a acre if somebody just wants to mine it), and get anywhere from 80 to 360 acres granted to them. All because the USA were obeying there constitutional limits and were not in the land business. These patents FALL UNDER TREATY LAW and no one can F$#% with them, not even the SCOTUS. They are international treaties between sovereigns, the President and the patentee and were even higher law than the constitution. These lands could ONLY be taken for insurrection and NEVER for ANY taxes or DEBT unless the patent was involved and title was changed. There has never been one single case of land being taken away when a properly prepared land patent was in place.
Consequently, I strongly disagree with your opinion. The original patentee did not buy the land, it was granted or given away for a valuable consideration or thought, he simply paid surveyor's fees. For example, Lord Baltimore received a huge grant from the King of England and after the revolutionary war he still retained his property even though England were losers. Only a total violater of international law would take lands away that were granted by treaty.
1. God's Law
2. Common Law
3. Law of Commerce(Old Jewish Law), Treaty Law, Law of Nations, UCC.
4. Constitutional Law
5.The rest is the garbage froth. (Statutes, ordinances, etc.).
The railroads recieved massive amounts of patents on either side of it's tracks for connecting the oceans by rail. People would go west and get a patent and sell the land right away for a pittance to lumber companies. Land was plentiful and so were crooks, just like today, but there were a few god fearing men that held sway, the people of the Reformation.
The confusion arises because people do not know what a properly prepared land grant is.
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Originally Posted by B Rookard
"A land patent is '[a]n instrument by which the government conveys a grant of public land to a private person.' " - Glass v. Goeckel, 473 Mich. 667 fn. 11, 703 N.W.2d 58 (2005).
Thus, the government owns the land. The government then conveys the property to someone. When they do, that property becomes part of the mass of property in the State.
"Where federal land is sold to a private person, it becomes part of the general mass of property in the state and is subject to ad valorem property taxation. [cite omitted] Thus, the land in this case ceased to be federal land and was subject to taxation when the unrestricted patent was issued [to the grantee]." - Bay Mills Indian Community v. State, 244 Mich. App. 739, 626 N.W.2d 169 (Mich. App., 2001).
Property owned by the federal government is generally not subject to taxation by the State. This has to do with intergovernmental immunity doctrine - the idea that one government cannot tax the other.
The federal government can sort of "pass on" this tax exemption in the way it grants the land.
One of the easiest examples is a conveyance to an Indian tribe. In that case, the conveyance is not to citizens of the State, but to what is essentially a foreign people (in a sense). That property is not really part of the State (in a way), or at least it can be thought of as not under State control, although within the boundaries of the State. Now although the State might not tax that property, that certainly doesn't mean that the property is not subject to *any* property tax ... for the Indians control the land and may subject it to their own taxes.
In the case of a grant to a citizen of the State, as the quote above notes, that property belongs to someone within the jurisdiction of the State ... and both the land and citizen are within the jurisdiction of the State ... and thus the State can proceed to tax that property.
Tax protestors have it exactly backwards. The property was exempt from State taxation while in the hands of the federal government (because of intergovernmental immunity) ... and once an unconditional land patent is issued, the property comes within the control of the State ... and is subject to tax.
Of course, there is far more that could be said, but I don't have time to write a book.
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