THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

There are two parts to the Common Law: First, "Treat equals equally" and 2) Treat "unequals unequally." All new law students learn both, but the second is seldom mentioned. If you are having a trial, you are determining whether there is an "inequity."

Anglo-Saxon Law recognized that delay means injustice. There are TWO parts to court decisions, justice is the SECOND. The FIRST is to have a place where things get DECIDED. The second is JUSTICE. The second is a matter of endless dispute. The first can be seen on a calendar.

After the Norman Conquest, everybody was subject to what was erroneously referred to as Roman Law from France. Anglo-Saxon Law was quicker. But unlike so-called Roman Law, Anglo-Saxon made no claim to Perfect Justice. It was developed largely to solve a problem.

The problem was feuds. With Nordics, feuds get totally out of hand. I don't need to explain that to an American. But in every Aryan society feuds were far more of a problem than almost anything decided in a court.

Like lawyers today, the Normans looked on Anglo-Saxon justice as crude. With the Norman Conquest English justice started on the road to Justice instead of Expediency. Law ceased to be something that had to dealt with as an adjunct to running the general society and became an Institution on its own.

This is an example of a critical rule: Wordism breeds institutions and ALL institutions follow an evolution, straight survival of the fittest, of their own, no matter what Words they quote. The first reaction we all have when told of earlier societies' trials is to see them as absurd. But what would an Anglo-Saxon have made of a court deciding to let a man off for child murder if "the chain of evidence is broken?"

Anglo-Saxon justice was based on "Who sez?" You lined up those testifying for one side and those for the other and weighed them. A thane would outweigh a certain number of average men. There were no hermaphrodites in black dresses and mascara. There was no paperwork except recording the two sides and the "Who sez."

Those who laugh at this have never lived in a community. In our society you have to find out who the person is at the trial. In those days, a person lived there all his life. In our society, the Judge is God in the courtroom. In those days, everybody in the courtroom played the same role he did in the community. This meant that the inequity of the society was reflected in the courtroom.o is a man was a thane, he had more influence in his society than the average man. If his influence was greater and he was a bad man, it showed in the courtroom, but no differently than it showed in society at large. The courtroom was just a part of an unjust society and it reflected that.

In a society, the higher ranked people have to be careful which side they take. If they let a felon go free and he commits another crime, they cannot just ignore the way a judge who is Quoting the Words can.

With the Institution of Law in England, courts became a separate Institution, based on books that said that in the world of the court there was no room for the outside world. The Institution of Law developed a priesthood that looked a lot like that of the Church and for the same reasons, which had nothing to do with God or Justice.

Anglo-Saxon Law provided law. It solved two problems, one of making a final judgment without a feud, and the second of doing it QUICKLY. These are objective realities. So-called Roman Law turned into an institution with its own enormous priesthood. Its only justification was that it SAID it delivered JUSTICE, which is an absolutely debatable question. You will find precious few lawyers who claim that today's law brings justice. But we all know that the legal Institution delays endlessly and allowed feuds to go on in feudal- note the name - times.

"Justice" was the only thing the institution ever claimed to deliver IN PLACE of the two objective things pre-Wordist Law delivered on, speed and preventing feuds. But once the institution was in place, the lawyers told us that law is not justice, and in fact real law has nothing to do with justice.

In fact, we no longer have any concept of what justice IS. One standard statement that is almost as stupid as Edison's "inspiration versus perspiration" crap is that "only the rich can afford justice." A rational person knows that the rich can afford ACQUITTAL. That is 180 degrees different from JUSTICE. But the difference occurs to no one, because the idea that law is justice no longer occurs to anyone.

But it does tell us what our legal institution has taught us that Justice IS. Justice is lots of lawyers. Religion becomes lots of priests or television evangelists. The man who said salvation is "free and without price" would have been burned for heresy.

But I mean this literally: To an institution that survives, the definition of what it produces will mean lots of money for them. Look around you. Do you see any churches that don't pay their ministers? Almost by definition, an institution depends on size, full-timers, MONEY.

We say that a person is deprived of JUSTICE of he doesn't have enough lawyers and procedures.

The Church of Rome banned translations of the Bible and banned lay people from owning a Bible.

In the end, the Church found that banning the Bible was unnecessary. They did their own translation and only demanded that the Church's Commentaries were seen as Biblical. As I said, institutions end up doing the same thing no matter what Book they claim.

The American Constitution was written down so that everybody could read it.

But in the end, the Institution of Law did exactly what the old Church did. The only Commentary that MATTERS is that of the guys in black dresses. They learned from the Institution at Rome's experience that it makes no difference who can read it as long as only one Authority can INTERPRET it.

In the end ruling institutions look just alike. They can claim the Word of Hamilton or the Words of Moses, but the Words ends up meaning nothing. Only the Interpretation, only the Commentary, is enforced. And that is every bit as effective as banning the document itself.