Time: Sun Apr 20 06:56:43 1997 by primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA04718; Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:02:45 -0700 (MST) by usr10.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA15573; Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:01:55 -0700 (MST) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 06:51:52 -0700 To: fwolist@sportsmen.net From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar] Subject: SLS: IRC is "Void for Vagueness" [This text is formatted in Courier 11, non-proportional spacing.] Excerpts from "The Federal Zone:" "Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue" re: Void for Vagueness Paul Andrew Mitchell All Rights Reserved Common Law Copyright The historical record documents undeniable proof that the confusion, ambiguity and jurisdictional deceptions now built into the IRC were deliberate. This historical record provides the "smoking gun" that proves the real intent was deception. The first Internal Revenue Code was Title 35 of the Revised Statutes of June 22, 1874. On December 5, 1898, Mr. Justice Cox of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia delivered an address before the Columbia Historical Society. In this address, he discussed the history of the District of Columbia as follows: In June 1866, an act was passed authorizing the President to appoint three commissioners to revise and bring together all the statutes .... [T]he act does not seem, in terms, to allude to the District of Columbia, or even to embrace it .... Without having any express authority to do so, they made a separate revision and collection of the acts of Congress relating to the District, besides the collection of general statutes relating to the whole United States. Each collection was reported to Congress, to be approved and enacted into law .... [T]he whole is enacted into law as the body of the statute law of the United States, under the title of Revised Statutes as of 22 June 1874. ... [T]he general collection might perhaps be considered, in a limited sense as a code for the United States, as it embraced all the laws affecting the whole United States within the constitutional legislative jurisdiction of Congress, but there could be no complete code for the entire United States, because the subjects which would be proper to be regulated by a code in the States are entirely outside the legislative authority of Congress. [District of Columbia Code, Historical Section] [emphasis added] More than half a century later, the deliberate confusion and ambiguity were problems that not only persisted; they were getting worse by the minute. In the year 1944, during Roosevelt's administration, Senator Barkley made a speech from the floor of the U.S. Senate in which he complained: Congress is to blame for these complexities to the extent, and only to the extent, to which it has accepted the advice, the recommendations, and the language of the Treasury Department, through its so-called experts who have sat in on the passage of every tax measure since I can remember. Every member of the House Ways and Means Committee and every member of the Senate Finance Committee knows that every time we have undertaken to write a new tax bill in the last 10 years we have started out with the universal desire to simplify the tax laws and the forms through which taxes are collected. We have attempted to adopt policies which would simplify them. When we have agreed upon a policy, we have submitted that policy to the Treasury Department to write the appropriate language to carry out that policy; and frequently the Treasury Department, through its experts, has brought back language so complicated and circumambient that neither Solomon nor all the wise men of the East could understand it or interpret it. [Congressional Record, 78th Congress, 2nd Session] [Vol. 90, Part 2, February 23, 1944, pages 1964-5] [emphasis added] You have, no doubt, heard that ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating the law. This principle is explicitly stated in the case law which defines the legal force and effect of administrative regulations. But, ambiguity and deception in the law are an excuse, and the ambiguity in the IRC is a major cause of our ignorance. Moreover, this principle applies as well to ambiguity and deception in the case law. Lack of specificity leads to uncertainty, which leads in turn to court decisions which are also void for vagueness. The 6th Amendment guarantees our right to ignore vague and ambiguous laws, and this must be extended to vague and ambiguous case law. In light of their enormous influence in laying the foundations for territorial heterogeneity and a legislative democracy for the federal zone, The Insular Cases have been justly criticized, by peers, for lacking the minimum judicial precision required in such cases: The Absence of Judicial Precision. -- Whether the decisions in the Insular Cases are considered correct or incorrect, it seems generally admitted that the opinions rendered are deficient in clearness and in precision, elements most essential in cases of such importance. Elaborate discussions and irreconcilable differences upon general principles, and upon fascinating and fundamental problems suggested by equally indiscriminating dicta in other cases, complicate, where they do not hide, the points at issue. It is extremely difficult to determine exactly what has been decided; the position of the court in similar cases arising in the future, or still pending, is entirely a matter of conjecture. ... It is still more to be regretted that the defects in the decision under discussion are by no means exceptional. From our system of allowing judges to express opinion upon general principles and of following judicial precedent, two evils almost inevitably result: our books are overcrowded with dicta, while dictum is frequently taken for decision. Since the questions involved are both fundamental and political, in constitutional cases more than in any others the temptation to digress, necessarily strong, is seldom resisted; at the same time it is strikingly difficult, in these cases, to distinguish between decision, ratio decidendi, and dictum. Yet because the questions involved are both extensive and political, and because the evils of a dictum or of an ill-considered decision are of corresponding importance, a precise analysis, with a thorough consideration of the questions raised, and of those questions only, is imperative. The continued absence of judicial precision may possibly become a matter of political importance; for opinions such as those rendered cannot be allowed a permanent place in our system of government. [15 Harvard Law Review 220] [anonymous] # # # ======================================================================== Paul Andrew, Mitchell, B.A., M.S. : Counselor at Law, federal witness email: [address in tool bar] : Eudora Pro 3.0.1 on Intel 586 CPU web site: http://www.supremelaw.com : library & law school registration ship to: c/o 2509 N. Campbell, #1776 : this is free speech, at its best Tucson, Arizona state : state zone, not the federal zone Postal Zone 85719/tdc : USPS delays first class w/o this ========================================================================
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