All Capital Spellings

[ndusa]

A friend sent this to me:

there has been promoted an argument that capitalized styles of cases means something sinister. Some advocates of this argument identify the source for this contention: a book written by a man named Berkhimer. Allegedly in this book, the author states that a "nom de guerre" is a "war name" symbolized by a given name being written in capital letters. I have tried to find this passage in this book but have been unable to do so. The argument contends that because of events in 1933, we have been made "enemies" and government indicates our status as enemies by the nom de guerre. If this is true, then why have the styles of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court since its establishment been in caps? This argument has gotten lots of people in trouble. For example, a number of people such as Al Thompson and Keith Anderson have defended themselves against criminal charges with this argument, but have been thrown into jail nonetheless. I have not even seen a decent brief on this issue which was predicated upon cases you can find in an ordinary law library.
In any event, several courts have rejected this argument:

1. Jaeger v. Dubuque County, 880 F.Supp. 640 (N.D.Iowa 1995)
2. United States v. Heard, 952 F.Supp. 329 (N.D.W.Va. 1996)
3. Boyce v. C.I.R., 72 T.C.M. ¶ 1996-439 ("an objection to the spelling of petitioners' names in capital letters because they are not 'fictitious entities'" was rejected)
4. United States v. Washington, 947 F.Supp. 87, 92 (S.D.N.Y. 1996)("Finally, the defendant contends that the Indictment must be dismissed because 'Kurt Washington,' spelled out in capital letters, is a fictitious name used by the Government to tax him improperly as a business, and that the correct spelling and presentation of his name is 'Kurt Washington.' This contention is baseless")
5. United States v. Klimek, 952 F.Supp. 1100 (E.D.Pa. 1997)
6. In re Gdowik, 228 B.R. 481, 482 (S.D.Fla. 1997)(claim that "the use of his name JOHN E GDOWIK is an 'illegal misnomer' and use of said name violates the right to his lawful status" was rejected)
7. Russell v. United States, 969 F.Supp. 24, 25 (W.D. Mich. 1997)("Petitioner * * * claims because his name is in all capital letters on the summons, he is not subject to the summons"; this argument held frivolous)
8. United States v. Lindbloom, 97-2 U.S.T.C. ¶ 50650 (W.D. Wash. 1997)("In this submission, Mr. Lindbloom states that he and his wife are not proper defendants to this action because their names are not spelled with all capital letters as indicated in the civil caption." The CAPS argument and the "refused for fraud" contention were rejected)
9. Rosenheck & Co., Inc. v. United States, 79 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 2715 (N.D. Ok. 1997)("Kostich has made the disingenuous argument the IRS documents at issue here fail to properly identify him as the taxpayer. Defendant Kostich contends his ‘Christian name' is Walter Edward, Kostich, Junior and since the IRS documents do not contain his ‘Christian name,' he is not the person named in the Notice of Levy. The Court expressly finds Defendant WALTER EDWARD KOSTICH JR. is the person identified in the Notice of Levy, irrespective of the commas, capitalization of letters, or other alleged irregularities Kostich identifies as improper. Similarly, the Court's finding applies to the filed pleadings in this matter")
10. United States v. Weatherley, 12 F.Supp.2d 469 (E.D.Pa. 1998)
11. United States v. Frech, 149 F.3d 1192 (10th Cir. 1998)("Defendants' assertion that the capitalization of their names in court documents constitutes constructive fraud, thereby depriving the district court of jurisdiction and venue, is without any basis in law or fact").

Jon Roland of The Constitution Society web site wrote the following about this argument:

Typographic Conventions in Law

Jon Roland, Constitution Society

One of the persistent myths among political dissidents is that such usages as initial or complete capitalization of names indicates different legal entities or a different legal status for the entity. They see a person's name sometimes written in all caps, and sometimes written only in initial caps, and attribute a sinister intent to this difference. They also attach special meanings to the ways words may be capitalized or abbreviated in founding documents, such as constitutions or the early writings of the Founders.
Such people seem to resist all efforts to explain that such conventions have no legal significance whatsoever, that they are just ways to emphasize certain kinds of type, to make it easier for the reader to scan the documents quickly and organize the contents in his mind.
They also seem to go to enormous lengths looking for dictionaries or court rules to tell them what such typography means, without ever seeming to find what they are looking for, other than the actual usages themselves in important court cases.

Well, there is an authoritative reference, the one used by courts and lawyers all over the world. It is The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, compiled by the editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review Association, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal, 16th ed. 1996. Copies can be obtained from any law book store or by writing The Harvard Law Review Association, Gannett House, 1511 Massachusetts Av., Cambridge, MA 02138.

To explain how typographic conventions originated, and what they mean, I am reminded of the story of the first grader whose teacher became alarmed by the crayon drawings of one of her students. She called in the school counselor and she became alarmed, so she called in a child psychologist, who also became alarmed in turn. Fearing for the mental health of the child, they called in her parents.

The parents, now themselves concerned about their child, arrived at the meeting. "What happened?", the father said. The school staff persons showed his daughter's art work to him and to his wife. The father looked the drawings over, and said, "Look pretty good to me. I couldn't do that well at that age."

"But the colors!" the teacher said. "She does everything in black, grey, and brown!" said the counselor. "It seems morbid" said the psychologist.

So the father said, "Why don't we ask my daughter?" The school staff looked aghast at this audacious suggestion, but, not having any better ideas, they asked the little girl to come in.

She saw her parents, and the school staffers, all gathered around her art work, looking concerned, and became a bit concerned herself. But her father knew what to say. "Hon, your teachers want to know why you are drawing everything in black, grey, and brown."

"I gave most of my crayons to the other kids when they used theirs up", she said. "Black, grey, and brown are the only colors I have left."

Lawyers continued to hand write legal documents long after typewriters were invented. As a profession, they tend to be the last to adopt new technology. When things were hand written, they had only a few ways to highlight words. They could use block printed characters instead of cursive, or they could underline. Typesetters converted the block printed characters to all caps, sometimes with different font sizes, and the underlined words to italics.

[ndusa]

Then computers came along. People started using them to produce legal documents. But a lot of them only had capital letters on their printers, or did not distinguish between upper and lower case. Programs in COBOL are examples of this. It was also found that it was easier to read words printed in all caps on forms, and to distinguish the newly-printed words from the pre-printed words on the forms.

In the meantime, there were advances in typesetting typography. People became able to print special symbols, bold face, different fonts and sizes, superscripts, underlined, and colors. And with that came demands for using differences in typography to highlight words in legal documents, including treatises, law review articles, briefs, etc.

Now we have personal computers and laser printers that can do anything the typesetter can do, and legal workers are now under pressure to produce nicely composed legal documents according to the same conventions that typesetters are asked to use.

This explosion of choices could have led to confusion, so the various courts have established rules for how they want legal documents prepared, and these rules are matched by similar but sometimes different rules of the major law review editors.

Basically, they have settled on three font styles: upper-and-lower case Roman, Italics, and Roman all-caps with larger point size for initials. Of course, if these are saved as ASCII text files, the Italics are lost, and the all-caps only show up as a single point size. Sometimes, to show Italics, as a legacy of underscoring, the words to be italicized are surrounded by underscore characters, as we do in the text above in the text version of this article.

The Bluebook calls for different typographics for the same kinds of things in different places. For example, a case cite like Marbury v. Madison would be italicized in the body of a law review article, but not in a footnote. Why? Who knows. It doesn't have to make sense. It's what they do. If you submit it using different conventions, the editors will change it to their journal's conventions.

The important thing to remember, however, is that there is no legal significance to the typography of a name, other than how well it distinguishes one object from others with which it might be confused. It is the object that matters. A misspelling is a "scrivener's error". Doesn't changed anything. Just needs to be corrected. Caps, complete or initial, don't mean anything. Just whatever the writer thought would aid the reader to get through the document quickly and with a minimum of confusion.

The nom de guerre position is one rabidly advocated by Wrong Way Law. It is all based on hype and emotions; the speakers who advocate this argument know how to push the emotional "hot buttons" at patriot pep rallies. I have reviewed the "best" briefs regarding this issue and they are all trash. Yet I continue to see people call themselves "John, of smith," "Jack: Smith," etc., and I just simply conclude that such parties have attended a Wrong Way Law seminar and have accepted a pack of lies. Further, it is remarkable that all the people who believe this idea have never checked it out; they just accept it because some patriot guru claimed it was correct.

[jumonjii]

So....according to this information...all caps doesn't mean anything?

That is more believable in my opinion.

The corporation thing....we are all corporations...is more interesting though.

I have found some court procedures where you are "alleged" to be a corporation...but I think there is more to it....still researching.

[ndusa]

Originally Posted by jumonjii

So....according to this information...all caps doesn't mean anything?

That is more believable in my opinion.

The corporation thing....we are all corporations...is more interesting though.

I have found some court procedures where you are "alleged" to be a corporation...but I think there is more to it....still researching.

I've helped three different people, and tried to make the argument, and all three times, by three diff. prosecutors, two in the same state, one in another, they just amended the complaint and changed it to upper and lower case.(they did it to make them happy I guess, not sure why they did) So, I would agree with you that it doesn't matter.

I didn't write the above post, the start of the thread, was sent to me by one of my buddies that lost, but it didn't matter when my friends tried it.

[jumonjii]

Originally Posted by ndusa

I've helped three different people, and tried to make the argument, and all three times, by three diff. prosecutors, two in the same state, one in another, they just amended the complaint and changed it to upper and lower case.(they did it to make them happy I guess, not sure why they did) So, I would agree with you that it doesn't matter.

I didn't write the above post, the start of the thread, was sent to me by one of my buddies that lost, but it didn't matter when my friends tried it.

Hmmm...okay.

Now see what you can dig up on corporation status

[ndusa]

Originally Posted by jumonjii

Hmmm...okay.

Now see what you can dig up on corporation status

Look at this link http://www.suijuris.net/forum/court/...ce-person.html

If I put that on here right, I'm looking at that now.

[ezrhythm]

Let there be light! ...on the subject.

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/law/strawman.htm

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/law/U-Inc.htm

[ndusa]

Originally Posted by ezrhythm

Let there be light! ...on the subject.

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/law/strawman.htm

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/law/U-Inc.htm

Personally, I would take what worldnewsstand.net says with a grain of salt. If this info were accurate, then why where my buddies names in capitals amended to upper and lower case???? Just wondering, because it didn't matter in thier cases.

[jumonjii]

Originally Posted by ndusa

Look at this link http://www.suijuris.net/forum/court/...ce-person.html

If I put that on here right, I'm looking at that now.

climbs on the fence.

Egads.... it's hard to decide if this indeed true or over analyzing terms....sigh

[ndusa]

Originally Posted by jumonjii

climbs on the fence.

Egads.... it's hard to decide if this indeed true or over analyzing terms....sigh

Just do what I do, put your name in upper and lower case on your court papers. Nothing will be said, as it doesn't matter to the Judge.

I got in a screaming match with a woman over them spelling her name wrong in a complaint. She explained she would "get off", I told her they would amend the complaint and she said they couldn't. Well, they amended the complaint, and she was convicted of a DUI.