Is a name property ??

[David Merrill]

When I was in a Messianic Jewish congregation I began to study the Jewish tradition of Bible Study down at the federal repository, as I call it. Which is to say rather than Government Documents being a part of the campus library, I think of it as a Government Document library with a whole slew of tangential material, so much so that the campus utilizes it to teach a wider curriculum.

One thing I recall encountering was that the Talmud is Oral Law. That confused me at first because the Talmud is in book form. For a long time though, the teachings found in the Talmud were passed down from generation to generation orally. This was Jewish Bible Study and around the time of CHRIST the rabbis felt this tradition was in danger so they began to immortalize it by putting it to book form.

This is what common law has become - case law. Stare decisis. In some discussions and conversation this is becoming more clear to me. The action of drawing upon the written law (Laws of Moses) through a written constitution (Nehemiah 10) was an oral tradition - the constitution-forming itself, put into written form, like the Talmud that followed.

Legislation follows the same form. The 'saving to suitors' clause is the reason that redemption had to be written into the elastic currency of 1913. The 'saving to suitors' clause of 1789 follows written tradition:

A false balance is an abomination to the LORD but a just weight is His delight. Proverbs 11:1

That is what the 'saving to suitors' clause says. Whenever men on the land can form jural society enough to run self-government, that self-government prevails and brings them (home rule) out of the laws of the sea. When men are incompetent to do so, then the law of the sea shall govern.


The first consitution in America is recognized as the Fundamental Orders of 1639: