The fundamental point about God’s Law, however, is that the specific laws set out for example in Leviticus, are the laws derived from the PRINCIPLES which form the basis of the laws. God’s LAW is the Ten Principles set out in the Ten Commandments. “These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the mist of the fire and cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: AND HE ADDED NO MORE. And He wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me” [Deuteronomy 5:22].

The great Jewish philosopher Philo explained it this way: “that of His laws God Himself, without having need of anyone else, thought fit to promulgate some by Himself alone [the Ten Commandments], and some He promulgated through the agency of His prophet Moses [such as the laws in Leviticus], whom He selected, by reason of his pre-eminent excellence among men, as the most suitable man to be the interpreter of His will. Now those which He delivered in His own Person by Himself alone, are both laws in general, and also the heads of particular laws; and those which He promulgated by the agency of His prophet are all referred to as those others.” [Decalogue Para V]

So, for example, the ‘sexual’ laws in Leviticus Chapter 18 and Deuteronomy Chapter 22 flow from the Seventh Commandment. That Commandment sets out the general principle from which Moses interpreted the will of God as revealed in the Commandment.

But the specific laws promulgated by Moses were not themselves ‘set in stone’. They reflected the times. Therefore, things like the punishments for breach of specific laws were much harsher than we would consider appropriate today. Further, many of the specific laws had to accommodate the circumstances when Moses formulated them in accordance with the Ten Commandments.

It is also worthy to note that no specific punishments are set out in the Ten Commandments.

The beauty of the Ten Commandments is thus that they would remain constant (set in stone) while the laws derived from them could ‘evolve’ with changing circumstances.

That is why we find Christ saying this: “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commiteth adultery.” [Mathew 19:8 & 9]

Christ was not suggesting that the seventh Commandment be changed, but only a specific law which Moses had promulgated pursuant to that Commandment. Christ specifically said this about the Law, the Ten Commandments: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” [Mathew 5:17-18]

Likewise, when the adulteress was brought before Christ, although he did not condemn her to a stoning, he did say “go, and sin no more” [John 8:11]. Christ was not suggesting that the Law did not apply, only that the punishment for the sin was too harsh. He also took the opportunity to suggest that those quick to condemn consider their own behavior.

The reason that we have such an abundance of laws today is that we have abandoned (or perhaps never instituted) this model of law making. We simply have no PRINCIPLES which inform the laws made by our lawmakers. They simply make it up as they go along, as do the courts. That leads to uncertainty and inconsistency which in turn engenders a contempt for the law, the lawmakers, and the judiciary.

That is why I argue so strongly for the Ten Principles of Freedom. They would provide a clear and unambiguous basis for the promulgation and application of law, and the limits of government. They would be Principles that everyone agrees to so the enforcement of laws made pursuant to those Principles could be regarded as ‘just’ – because each and every one of us would only be compelled to submit to what we had agreed to. Lawmakers and judges would then be what they should be – servants of the people, rather than the other way round.

I’d be very interested to hear your views on the Ten Principles if you have the time to consider them.

Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights

DRS

In my first post (which didn't seem to take) I asked, what good is a law if everyone is not required to follow it?

In my particular case (see link above), my ex-wife was involved in both adultery and sexual deviancy, but was still awarded custody of my son. This was despite not only a NE law (Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-364 (Supp. 2004)) referencing sexual behavior as a test of parental fitness, but also State Supreme Court rulings as precedent.

So, I ask again a different way~ what good is a law if even the government doesn’t heed it?

DRS

http://www.fathersrightsne.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=520

In my first post (which didn't seem to take) I asked, what good is a law if everyone is not required to follow it?

In my particular case (see link above), my ex-wife was involved in both adultery and sexual deviancy, but was still awarded custody of my son. This was despite not only a NE law (Neb. Rev. Stat. 42-364 (Supp. 2004)) referencing sexual behavior as a test of parental fitness, but also State Supreme Court rulings as precedent.

So, I ask again a different way~ what good is a law if even the government doesn’t heed it?

DRS

I have spent some time in the Biblical book of Leviticus (the Biblical Book of the Law) and while studying for a custody battle came to read through men’s laws.
Of course, it sounds “common sensical”, but I was struck by how much reading men’s laws reminded me of the book of Leviticus; that the legal code was men’s attempt to delineate right from wrong. Again, I know it sounds like “common sense”, but once I saw “the law” from that perspective, it was much easier to understand.

One other thing about it struck me as funny~ It takes volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes for men to state their laws, but G_d is much more efficient. :-)

DRS

Due to my ex-wife's Adultery / sexual deviancies and the Court's subsequent awarding of the custody of my son to her, I've been fighting for custody for a number of years now.

What has changed, however, is that my fight has moved from being against my ex-wife to being against a "Judge" and has in fact turned into a referendum on the entire legal system.
While there were not only laws supporting my position, there were also State Supreme Court rulings supporting my position, too. Nevertheless, the "judge" completely ignored them.

What good is a law when an official of the government doesn't have to abide by it?

DRS

Re: No law

Texas is not alone when it comes to non-enforcement of the law.

Academia has been, and still is, fighting tooth and nail to overcome a statistical under-representation of minorities in their admissions and faculty. They assume that any under-representation is due to de facto discrimination and refuse to accept any other cause as possible. However, no campus has yet admitted that it ever discriminated against racial minorities. Accordingly, there is an active University of California Committee on Affirmative Action And Diversity to find ways to circumvent the law – ten years after the voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996 to end race-based affirmative action. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/committees/ucaad/ucaad.12.10.04.minutes.pdf
In addition to that, there is a “UC President’s Task Force on Faculty Diversity” whose job is also to circumvent the law in faculty hiring:

“The enactment of Proposition 209 in 1996 raised many questions about the status of faculty diversity efforts at the University of California. However, the Task Force found that the non-discrimination requirement in Proposition 209 can be understood as supporting the University’s commitment to provide equal opportunity in hiring, compensation and all other employment programs. Where there is under-representation, the University must take steps to address the barriers that prevent full participation of minorities in academic careers. Further, schools and departments in every field can identify the academic values that are enhanced by a diverse teaching and research environment. Strategies to select and advance scholars with the expertise to foster those academic values are essential if UC is to maintain its excellence as a premier public institution.”
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/facultydiversity/executive-summary.pdf

This is exactly what the people voted to eliminate when they passed Prop 209.

More links:

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/facultydiversity/report.html

“In 1996, Californians voted to ban race and gender preferences in government and education. Ten years later, the chancellor of the state-funded University of California at Berkeley, Robert Birgeneau, announced a new Vice Chancellorship for Equity and Inclusion, charged with making Berkeley more ‘inclusive’ and ‘less hostile’ to ‘underrepresented minority . . . groups.’ This move is just the latest expression of the University of California’s unrelenting resistance to the 1996 voter initiative, in every way possible short of patent violation. Stasi apparatchiks disappeared more meekly after the Soviet Empire’s collapse than California’s race commissars have retreated after voters tried to oust their preference regime.”
“Affirmative Action Showdown”
By Heather MacDonald
City Journal | January 30, 2007
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26670

Yes, we have many laws, some more outrageous than others. Here in Texas, enforcement of the
LAW is so feeble and weak, I am able to make the argument that there IS NO LAW. Without
enforcement of the LAW, there is NO LAW. I have a fist full of court orders and none of them can
be enforced by anyone…..not even by the court that issued them. My ex-wife has had four
protective orders put on her, for her violence and threats of violence against me and the kids. It
means absolutely nothing. She has moved out of state to escape the jurisdiction of the Texas
courts and took the three kids with her. The court orders ALL state that she and the kids are to
remain in Burnet County. Not only is there no enforcement of these Texas court orders, they are
not worth ten cents in Arkansas.

I have worked in public service for 33 years and the longer I worked in state and local government
the more I saw state law and local ordinance ignored with impunity. Yes, that is what the law says,
and NO, that is not what we are going to do. Maybe it is just Texas, you say? I also worked in
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. It was the same everywhere. No wonder there are tens of
millions of illegal aliens in this country. There is no law.

Re: Case of Scott Peterson

Perhaps a quote is in order here to help us understand the dual legal nature of the human fetus. Gulliver is stranded on an island ruled by a race of intelligent horses and attempts to explain to the ruler of the horses the legal system in England:

“… there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbor hath a mind to my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practiced almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an office unnatural he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill will. The second disadvantage is that my lawyer, must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client, by insinuating that he has justice on his side. The second way is, for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary, and this, if it be skillfully done, will certainly bespeak the favor of the Bench.” Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, c.1726.

Those who see a striking similarity between what Gulliver described and our law today would agree that we apparently have inherited much of it from English Common Law.

If we approach the legal status of the human fetus (or any child for that matter) under a system in which “by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white” we can see that the question, “Is a human fetus a human being?” is answered by, “It all depends.” On what, you might ask, after all, something is either human or it is not, it would seem.

Where the rubber meets the road in all the legal mumbo-jumbo from abortion to child custody, the ultimate answer depends on only one real question: does the mother want the fetus/child/whatever? If the mother wants it, it’s human, hence Peterson’s second conviction; if she doesn’t, it’s not, hence the abortionist’s innocence. Simple as that.

The inescapable conclusion that the fetus/child/whatever is the de facto property of the mother is evidenced by her apparently more latitude on what she may do with her fetus/child/whatever than what I have with my real estate which is governed tightly by local ordinances and homeowner association CC&Rs.

Once we recognize that children are the property of the mother, just as slaves were the property of their masters, whether they are/were human beings or not, just depends, and suddenly most questions like yours answer themselves. And that, my friend, is a sad fact of American jurisprudence today.

But when a ‘bad’ law is struck down (even a law once upheld by SCOTUS), and it has had the effect of infringing someone’s liberty, should someone not be held accountable? I appreciate that there are occasions when there will be accountability, but more often than not, there won’t be.

If government and the courts were constrained in what they could do by a set of principles, especially principles agreed to by all the people, then they could be held accountable for the effect of a breach of those principles by passing laws or making decisions which contravene or exceed those principles. And at least we would know the basis on which laws and judicial decisions were required to be made. That is what the Ten Principles are all about.

Further, the effect of the Ten Principles would render these semantics about ‘just laws’, ‘duty to obey the law’, and even ‘illegal laws’, irrelevant. Any law would only be a law if it complied with the Ten Principles. Any laws promulgated which breached those principles would give rise to a legal liability on those officials (executive, legislative, or judicial) for any interference with the freedom of any person. And such officials should be barred from holding any further public office.

We would then be closer to having a concept of ‘justice’ that actually means something more than what a select group of people decide it should mean.

hvance, I agree with what you say, and I think it is again a symptom of the lack of any principles on which such decisions are made.

Joseph BH McMillan
http://www.freedomvrights