Uh oh ... Jaden Smith may have drunken the Kool-Aid

[tracer]

In the latest tweet from Jaden Smith (son of Will Smith), he seems to be swayed by Bill Benson's The Law That Never Was :

https://twitter.com/officialjaden/statu ... 7973328896

Here's a screen shot:

[Pottapaug1938]

As Wesley Snipes can attest, there is no shortage of bad advice out there for celebrities and their families.

[noblepa]

When I was in high school, learning about the concept of Judicial Review, I asked the teacher if SCOTUS could declare a constitutional amendment to be unconstitutional, as they sometimes do with statutes.

I think he was kind of taken aback, as if no one had ever asked such a question. His response was a somewhat lame, "well, they might be able to rule that it was not ratified properly". Bear in mind that this was an ordinary high school history teacher, not a judge, lawyer or law professor.

Years later, when I first started reading about tax protesters and the notion that the 16th had not really been ratified, I read of a case (at least I think I remember it), in which someone DID challenge the 16th's ratification. In that case, IIRC, SCOTUS sidestepped the question by ruling that ratification was a political issue, not a legal one, and that, when the Secretary of State certified that the 16th had been ratified, that was the end of it.

Am I crazy? Does anyone remember the case I'm talking about? IIRC, it happened shortly after the 16th was ratified, so it is not a new question.

Why can't the TP's understand and accept that, in the US, at least, in a very real sense, interpretation of the law is what SCOTUS says it is. So, if the supremes rule that the 16th was properly ratified, there's no point arguing about it. If you think the 16th is wrong, convince congress to pass a new amendment repealing it, and convince the state legislatures to ratify it.

I just hope that Jaden doesn't act on his mistaken belief and refuse to file tax returns. As someone mentioned, he should talk to Wesley Snipes, first.

[noblepa]

My favorite "the 16th was never ratified" argument was that Ohio, one of the ratifying states, did not become a state until 1952 (a year after I was born in Akron. Does that mean that I'm not a natural born citizen?).

Ohio actually became a state in 1803. We're the 17th state. The Constitution is silent on exactly what the process of becoming a state is, and exactly when a state is entered into the union. In 1952, a civic group in Ohio was planning ahead for the sesquicentennial of Ohio statehood the following year, and they realized that there was no specific date for the event.

As I understand it, early in 1803, people in the then-territory of Ohio, held an election to determine if Ohio should become a state. A while later, there was an election to choose delegates to a convention to draft the first state constitution. A short while later, the convention was held and a state constitution was submitted to congress. After that, yet another election was held to choose the first governor and state legislators. Then, the newly elected government met (in Chilicothe, IIRC), to swear themselves in and form the new government. The question was, which of those events was the magic moment.

Fast forward to 1952. No one was sure which of these dates was the moment that Ohio officially became a state, so the Ohio congressional delegation asked for a resolution by congress, establishing a date, so the people back home in Ohio would know when to hold the parades and fireworks.

This vote, of course, was recorded in the Congressional Record. Some TP apparently stumbled across this and immediately jumped to the conclusion that the 1952 vote was when Ohio became a state. And, if Ohio didn't become a state until 1952, their vote to ratify the 16th in 1913 could not possibly have been valid. Eureka!!!

How can they possibly be so stupid as to think that the 1913 SOS would not have recognized that a document purporting to ratify the amendment came from a territory and not a state? That would be akin to Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands ratifying a constitutional amendment today.

[Hyrion]

The question was, which of those events was the magic moment.

I'm surprised that's ever really considered as a serious question. It seems clear to me the answer is:

• The steps it takes for a particular State to be ratified and officially part of the Union makes it official when the last step is taken!

Consider baking a cake. First you put flower in the bowl, then the sugar, the baking soda and so on. So when is it officially a cake? When it's done baking!

When building a stool - first you need to get the wood, then cut it, form it and so on. When is it officially a stool? When it's complete.

Those are just two examples of why it seems to me it should be easy to identify when Ohio actually became a State. There were things needed in order to become an official state - when those were completed, that's the date that should be used. There are other things that were needed in order for Ohio to function - but were not needed to officially become a State - those shouldn't be considered.

Seems easy enough from my perspective ... but then, maybe the US Government didn't have an official set of requirements for when a State was officially recognized as part of the Union with all the benefits and obligations thereof.

In which case, I'd suggest making it easy by looking up the current requirements of what it'd take for a "specific territory to become an official part of the United States subject to all USA responsibilities and obligations such as the application of Federal Law" - look at when Ohio met all those requirements and pick the associating date.

Worst case scenario: there has never been and is not today any official requirements that would make a separate Jurisdiction part of the US. In which case, I'd suggest the Ohio politicians simply pick an arbitrary date - put all the dates with reasonably valid explanations of why that date should be considered into a hat and have Miss Ohio pick one.

[noblepa]

I don't really know which date they settled on in 1952. I was only a year old at the time.

I should know, because they probably used the same date for the bicentennial in 2003. I was 52 for that one. If I recall, it was more of a summer long celebration, with many activies around the state.

I believe that, in the past 212 years, the process of statehood has become much more well defined than it was in 1803. Remember, Ohio was only the fifth state added to the union after the adoption of the Constitution in 1789. They were kind of making it up as they went along.

I was merely recounting the story as I heard it.

[wserra]

In that case, IIRC, SCOTUS sidestepped the question by ruling that ratification was a political issue, not a legal one, and that, when the Secretary of State certified that the 16th had been ratified, that was the end of it.

Am I crazy? Does anyone remember the case I'm talking about? IIRC, it happened shortly after the 16th was ratified, so it is not a new question.

I don't believe that the Supreme Court has ever ruled specifically on whether the 16th was ratified. There is nonetheless no question whatsoever on what the ruling would be.

The 16th Amendment was ratified (yes, it was) in 1913. Nine years later, the Supreme Court did rule on ratification of the 19th Amendment. Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922). The ruling:

As the Legislatures of Tennessee and of West Virginia had power to adopt the resolutions of ratification, official notice to the Secretary, duly authenticated, that they had done so, was conclusive upon him, and, being certified to by his proclamation, is conclusive upon the courts.

In other words, ratification of a constitutional amendment is a question for the Secretary of State, not the Courts.

The end.

[Famspear]

.....Am I crazy? Does anyone remember the case I'm talking about? IIRC, it happened shortly after the 16th was ratified, so it is not a new question.....

See the response by wserra, above.

The Supreme Court has never ruled on ratification of the Amendment, but several of the courts of appeals have done so.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protes ... _arguments

The article covers both the "non-ratification" nonsense and the "Ohio was not a state" nonsense.

EDIT: And, of course, see the Tax Protester FAQ by Dan Evans:

http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html#ratification

[Famspear]

What is a little scary is the idea that there are so many gullible people out there. The tax protesters are the very people who accuse the majority of Americans of being "sheeple," yet it is the tax protesters themselves who exhibit the enthusiasm to believe the most silly things.

For example, one of the arguments is that at least one state that voted AGAINST ratification supposedly was counted as having voted for it. The question that I have posed over and over, and which no tax protester has ever been able to answer, is: If that's so, then why didn't that state's legislature complain?

Did every single member of every state legislature that was counted as voting to ratify the amendment (and a total of 42 states have ratified the amendment) simply NOT NOTICE that the Amendment was put on the books?

Why did no one complain in 1913, the year the amendment was ratified?
Why did no one complain in 1914?
Why did no one complain in 1915?
Why did no one complain in 1916?
Why did no one complain in 1917?
Why did no one complain in 1918?
Why did no one complain in 1919?
Why did no one complain in 1920?
Why did no one complain in 1921?
Why did no one complain in 1922?
Why did no one complain in 1923?
Why did no one complain in 1924?
Why did no one complain in 1925?
Why did no one complain in 1926?
Why did no one complain in 1927?
Why did no one complain in 1928?
Why did no one complain in 1929?
Why did no one complain in 1930?
Why did no one complain in 1931?
Why did no one complain in 1932?
Why did no one complain in 1933?
Why did no one complain in 1934?
Why did no one complain in 1935?
Why did no one complain in 1936?
Why did no one complain in 1937?
Why did no one complain in 1938?
Why did no one complain in 1939, when the 1939 Internal Revenue Code was enacted?
Why did no one complain in 1940?
Why did no one complain in 1941?
Why did no one complain in 1942?
Why did no one complain in 1943?
Why did no one complain in 1944?
Why did no one complain in 1945?
Why did no one complain in 1946?
Why did no one complain in 1947?
Why did no one complain in 1948?
Why did no one complain in 1949?
Why did no one complain in 1950?
Why did no one complain in 1951?
Why did no one complain in 1952?
Why did no one complain in 1953, the year in which Ohio was supposedly admitted as a state?
Why did no one complain in 1954, when the 1954 Code was enacted?
Why did no one complain in 1955?
Why did no one complain in 1956?
Why did no one complain in 1957?
Why did no one complain in 1958?
Why did no one complain in 1959?
Why did no one complain in 1960?
Why did no one complain in 1961?
Why did no one complain in 1962?
Why did no one complain in 1963?
Why did no one complain in 1964?
Why did no one complain in 1965?
Why did no one complain in 1966?
Why did no one complain in 1967?
Why did no one complain in 1968?
Why did no one complain in 1969?
Why did no one complain in 1970?
Why did no one complain in 1971?
Why did no one complain in 1972?
Why did no one complain in 1973?
Why did no one complain in 1974?

Why is it that there is no record of any court case involving the supposed "non-ratification" until the year 1975?

Answer: Because it's something that was made by tax protesters, apparently in the early 1970s.

[Gregg]

In Re: Ohio Statehood

On February 19, 1803, US President Thomas Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio's boundaries and constitution.[60] However, Congress had never passed a resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. The current custom of Congress declaring an official date of statehood did not begin until 1812, with Louisiana's admission as the 18th state. Although no formal resolution of admission was required, when the oversight was discovered in 1953, Ohio congressman George H. Bender introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union retroactive to March 1, 1803, the date on which the Ohio General Assembly first convened.[61] At a special session at the old state capital in Chillicothe, the Ohio state legislature approved a new petition for statehood that was delivered to Washington, D.C. on horseback. On August 7, 1953 (the year of Ohio's 150th anniversary), President Eisenhower signed a congressional joint resolution that officially declared March 1, 1803 the date of Ohio's admittance into the Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio

[Cpt Banjo]

The dispute about Ohio's ratification is much ado about nothing. Even if you throw it out, two additional states ratified the amendment well before the taxing statute was enacted in 1913.

[Famspear]

The dispute about Ohio's ratification is much ado about nothing. Even if you throw it out, two additional states ratified the amendment well before the taxing statute was enacted in 1913.

Yes, and at the time of ratification, only 36 states were needed. State number 36 ratified the Amendment on February 3, 1913. On February 25, 1913, the Secretary of State declared that the ratification was complete.

Additional states ratified as well. According to the U.S. Government Publishing Office (formerly known as the U.S. Government Printing Office) a total of 42 states had ratified the amendment by March 7, 1913.

The statute was enacted in October 1913.

[notorial dissent]

So contrary to what the sovrunidjits want to believe, it wasn't that Ohio hadn't been a state all those years, just that the Congress hadn't gotten around to officially noting it, at least that they know.

[noblepa]

The Supreme Court has never ruled on ratification of the Amendment, but several of the courts of appeals have done so.

Okay, I looked up Leser v. Garnett. It dealt with the 19th Amendment (women's suffrage), not the 16th. However, the court did effectively rule that the Secretary of State has the final word on ratification, not the courts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leser_v._Garnett

From the decision: "The court found that as the Secretary of State had accepted the ratifications by the legislatures of the two states as valid, they were valid, effectively ruling the matter as non-justiciable."

So, while that decision did not deal with the 16th, it seems to me (IANAL) that the ruling that gives the SOS the final say would apply to the 16th, as well. And, the SOS in 1913 did, if fact, certify that the 16th had been ratified.

So, as is often the case, the details got muddied in the retelling and misremembering, but the basic concept was correct. I'm afraid I was guilty of the same thing we often criticize the TP's for: accepting internet articles as "fact", rather than going to the source and using critical thinking skills. Mea culpa.

[rogfulton]

I had gone to Jaden Smith's Twitter account and posted a link to the Q thread on Bill Benson's conviction. I am no longer authorized to view any tweets on his account. I suspect I'm blocked and my tweet removed. Could someone check? I'm @rogfulton over there.

[JamesVincent]

I had gone to Jaden Smith's Twitter account and posted a link to the Q thread on Bill Benson's conviction. I am no longer authorized to view any tweets on his account. I suspect I'm blocked and my tweet removed. Could someone check? I'm @rogfulton over there.

I just tried the link and it says page no longer exists.

[Demosthenes]

http://www.refinery29.com/2015/05/86917 ... ts-twitter

[rogfulton]

Priceless link Demo, thanks.