A
'Republic' is, by definition, a 'Corporation.'
Article. IV Section. 4.
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them
against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive
(when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence."
http://www.constitution.org/cs_found.htm
Republic:
Main Entry:
re·pub·lic noun(1)
: a
government in which supreme
power resides in a body of citizens
entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and
representatives responsible to them and governing
according to law (2)
: a political unit (as a nation) having such a form
of government
c : a usually specified
republican
government of a political unit
cor·po·ra·tion n.
- A body that is granted a charter recognizing it
as a separate legal entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities
distinct from those of its members.
- Such a body created for purposes of government.
Also called body corporate.
- A group of people combined into or acting as one
body.
"The word 'corporations,' in its largest sense,
has a more extensive meaning than people generally are aware of. Any
body politic (sole or aggregate) whether its power be restricted or
transcendant, is in this sense 'a corporation.' ...
In this extensive sense, not only each State singly, but even the
United States may without impropriety be termed 'corporations.' I
have, therefore, in contradistinction to this large and indefinite term, used the term 'subordinate corporations,' meaning to refer to such
only (as alone capable of the slightest application, for the purpose of the
objection) whose creation and whose powers are limited by
law."
Blackstone classifies everything from
the kingdom to groups chartered for the advancement . . . [of] commerce as
corporations exemplifying political constitutions. Whatever the ends of
the particular corporation, all are bodies politic . . . created and
devised by human laws for the purpose of society and
government.
(Black's Law
Dictionary, 6th Edition, page 113): Corporatons: "Persons created and
devised by human laws for the purpose of society and
governments, as distinguished from natural
persons."
"Main Entry: cor·po·ra·tion noun
Date: 15th
century
1 a obsolete : a group of merchants or traders
united in a trade guild b : the municipal authorities of a town or
city
2 : a body formed
and authorized by law to act as a single person
although constituted by one or more persons and
legally endowed with various rights and duties including the capacity of
succession."
"Section 1. Each county of the state, now or
hereafter organized, shall be a body politic and
corporate."
"In Nero's Rome, the political reality
was that the head of the Republic absorbed all public rights and little control
was left to the members. In England, however, the corporate conception of
the state provided a more powerful legal method for restraining the powers of
the king. Historically, the legal treatment of the king as both a
corporation of the kingdom and as a natural person exemplified the ongoing
conflict in England between the republican idea that the king derived his power
from the people and the monarchical doctrine that sovereign power inhered in his
natural person." http://law.wustl.edu/journal/6/p_1_Enlow.pdf
"This Article discusses the corporate
conception of the state in European and American legal history. The corporation
as a legal idea was instrumental in the development of modern public law. In
medieval and early modern history, the application of corporate law principles
to the state contributed to the development of
constitutionalism and to the idea of popular sovereignty.
2 This Article traces a small part of this history in the common law of
England and in the broader European canon law. The purpose of this historical
review is to provide a background for understanding similar corporate views of
the state in early American legal history views which are central to the
original understanding of limited government. As Justice Iredell's quotation [in
CHISHOLM above] suggests, the
corporate conception of the state was not limited to European jurisprudence, but
had real currency in American jurisprudence as well. The conception
of the state as a corporation has historically been associated with the major
goal of constitutionalism: the limitation of governmental power by the
law. 3 In England, lawyers and parliamentarians classified
the king as a legal corporation in order to provide principled, legal
limitations to his powers."http://law.wustl.edu/journal/6/p_1_Enlow.pdf
I hope this clarifies the beneficial nature of corporate "government
of Laws" (i.e., according to the Consent of the
Governed) as distingished from "a government of
men."
Mark R. Ferran BSEE scl JD mcl
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 1:51
PM
Subject: Re: [Legal_Self_Representation]
'Free System of Laws"
My definition of a Republican form of government was well explained and
has a History going back at least as far as the Greeks. A 'Republic' is NOT a
'corporation'. Your turn. Provide your 'antecedent authorities'.
Ed44