The Law: Foundations
In this post I discuss the foundation of Law
Laws are the implementation of political philosophy.
All law and rights theory starts with property rights law.
Laws are the implementation of political philosophy.
All law and rights theory starts with property rights law.
of an innocent person morally deserves death.
Nothing revolutionary or new there. Also, check out the Bracero program.
What if I am a property owner near the border, and I have a business -- maybe a restaurant or market -- and I want Mexicans to come shop there without having to apply for immigration? What if I have friends who are Mexican citizens and I want them to come visit me? Having guards at the border preventing my potential customers or friends from coming to my private land is telling me I can't use my property as I see fit. Closed borders violate citizens' rights; open borders allowing access into "the country" at large -- but not to any individual's private property -- cannot violate anyone's legitimate property rights. You do not have a positive right to control the use of my property and exclude my invited guests and customers.
Denying national sovereignty denies individual ownership (property rights) by telling the "owner" you can't do this with what you possess because others say so.
I threw into the conversation solely because I find it ironic that Dale posts a solid piece on property rights when he undercuts his argument with the philosophical right to travel.
Look at the Articles of Confederation. In those, each of the States was treated according to how they saw themselves: as separate, sovereign entities or States. They had all the same legal authority as France or Britain within their geographical areas. That was why when they formed the Articles of Confederation, each State had a single vote - they were treated by each other as sovereign nations - not as part of some indiscriminate (national) whole. In very fact the word confederation is taken from a compounding of sovereign nations - not merely an amalgam under a single national head. That was also why when they were given the Constitution to ratify, the States were left to themselves as to how to either ratify or disassociate.
I would also note that the States themselves codified their own immigration rules. Massachusetts wrote into its own Constitution (which pre-dates the Constitution) a denial of slavery - and slaves were imported (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constit.... Just because the entire body of Confederated States did not agree on a single policy which applied to all of them prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act did not mean that the individual States had not already taken upon themselves the rights and obligations of sovereignty defined by specific geographic boundaries.
Yet another example I would submit is the existence of various extradition treaties between the States up to and even following ratification of the Constitution. The very notion of extradition for crimes wholly hinges upon sovereignty within geographical boundaries and recognized jurisdictional authority.
image: https://facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1...
Load more comments...