THE NEAR UNIVERSAL IGNORANCE OF THE EMPIRICAL BASIS OF OUR LEGAL SYSTEM
Why Don’t You Know About Commonality and Concurrency – and Why Don’t Our Lawyers, Legislators, and Judges?
Law Is Taught As Carpentry Not Architecture
Legal education often focuses on specific doctrines, case law, and statutory interpretation rather than overarching philosophical concepts unless in a constitutional law, jurisprudence or decidability. Worse most have no understanding of behavioral economics, macroeconomics, or political economy.
Studying the Trees And Ignoring the Forest
The concepts of “commonality” and” concurrency” are embedded in legal principles but not explicitly labeled as such. Terms like “precedent,” “equal protection,” “due process”, and “bicameralism”, are more commonly used.
Basic Principles Missing In Legal Education
In the law, particularly American law, if less so British, we require Concurrency of populations (house), states (senate), legislatures (electoral college) in voting and legislation (positiva) AND Commonality of decisions across classes and regions in dispute resolution in court (negativa) to produce legitimacy of the construction of law, AND Settled Law in the population – thus ending conflicts.
It’s Just Science
These are both empirical processes insure both sovereignty of the people by consent of the regions and classes in voting and legislation, and commonality in the resolution of disputes, which together protect the interests of the minority against the majority and where both are required under the common law, where the people are sovereign, because there is no alternative to that empiricism.
The Opposite of Majority Democracy
We do NOT live in a democracy. We live under the Natural Law of Sovereignty, Reciprocity and Duty, codified in a Constitution, forming a Republic, prohibiting violations of sovereignty reciprocity and duty, and by use of concurrent voting, across classes and regions, thus protecting the minority from the majority by insuring people agree (consent) to a statute, even if by proxy through elected representatives, before the enactment of legislation and regulation (statute law) where conflicts are resolved in the Court, by findings of the Court (‘judge discovered law, but not judge made law’), by adversarial competition before a judge and jury of their sovereign peers.
Accumulated Ignorance Because of Lack of Recording in the Constitution
In other words, we have lost the understanding of the fact that the constitution produced an empirical (scientific) method of governance. And it is the only one extant, despite the efforts of such petty theorists as Rez, Kelsen, Dworkin, Rawls and so many others so less competent and knowledgable than their ancestors.
The Solution
Of course, my life’s work seeks to correct this problem with a formal science of decidability applied to law, policy, and economy. But if it was easy someone would have done it before me – instead of inventing sophistry by which to empower elites to circumvent the people, even if the people are so frustrated by the process that they might wish it – at their peril.
Affections
Curt Doolittle
The Natural Law Institute