Quote:
Originally Posted by Tower
Does not the Blacks Law Dictonary, Oxford Law Dictionary and others define LAW for everyone within the LAW society?
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Most of the other stuff has been covered, but I'd like to add that. . . .
NO, Blacks Law Dictonary, Oxford Law Dictionary and others DO NOT define LAW for everyone within the LAW society.
Law dictionaries can be a useful aid when doing interpretation, but the only thing that defines a law is the statute governing that law (which is why most start with a definitions section) and (outside of Quebec) the court rulings that have interpreted and applied the statute.
The most eye-rolling thing about the Freeman movement, to me, is their insistence that PERSON (and you can substitute many other terms there) means X in the law, that the word PERSON in every statute must then have that meaning, and therefore the result of reading a statute with that meaning of PERSON must be THE LAW, like it or not!
It's just plain wrong.
When interpreting a provision of a statute (and therefore THE LAW) you do have to consider the text (i.e. the words used), but then you have to go beyond that and consider the context (i.e. how that provision relates to those in the relevant portion of the statute and the entire statute itself) as well as the purpose of the law (i.e. what the legislature was trying to accomplish when enacting that law).
If a given definition of a word like PERSON makes no sense given the context of the statute and the purpose it was intended to serve, the that's NOT the meaning of PERSON, regardless of what Black's Law Dictionary says.
So please stop saying "this is what PERSON means IN LAW", or "this is what UNDERSTAND means IN LAW", or "I deconstructed this statute using a legal dictionary and this is what THE LAW is" because it just makes no sense.