Time: Sun Apr 20 06:56:43 1997
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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]
# # #
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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
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