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#Black s Law Dictionary is a Hoax and there is no such thing as capitus diminutio, page 1

posted on Jun, 15 2008 @ 02:35 AM

Why Black's Law Dictionary is a Hoax

I have bee doing a lot of research into the whole capitus diminutio maxima thing. Supposedly what capitus diminutio maxima means is that your name appearing in all capitol letters (JOHN DOE) on any legal documents are not actually representing you, but are representing a corporate entity of you. This means you have surrendered your rights and have gone from freedom to bondage. Sounds fishy to me.

Now the reason I was looking into this was because I had to appear in court last week, and naturally, if this was true, I would want to take full advantage of it. So I met my lawyer in court, a man named Gary Porter, and asked him about capitus diminutio and explained to him what it was. He told me that he'd never heard of it before and that it was absolute baloney. Now this lawyer is not just some court appointed BS lawyer. he is very expensive and good at what he does, so I give him some credibilty. That's when I started thinking and wanted to do some more research on my own.

So I looked it up online and found mostly conspiracy websites that contained the info, but I wanted to find sources outside of conspiracy sites. So I found this on Yahoo Answers:

Answer: I'm a lawyer and I am not familiar with the term. According to one site I read it is a term referenced in Black's Law Dictionary but no online legal dictionaries I checked had the term. The word capitis in Latin has to do with the head, not with capital letters.

The US Constitution is the supreme law of the country (see Marbury v. Madison) and contains nothing about this alleged doctrine. However, it does abolish slavery (14th Amendment). As such, there's no legal support for this alleged doctrine. The Admiralty Courts (which some sites claim are the way this doctrine is invoked) are inferior courts to the Supreme Court and the lower federal circuit courts. (See Article III of the Constitution).

This doctrine did exist in Roman Law (www.newadvent.org. ) but had nothing to do with capital letters at all. That's just invention by people with too much paranoia and time on their hands.

Hmmm. seems to me that this backs what my lawyer was saying also. And after reading this, I decided to do a little more digging to find out about Black's Law Dictionary because that is where this lawyer said is the only place he's heard of it being published, and I'd never heard of Black's Dictionary before.

So after some more searching I found this:

Montreal, PQ (Reuters) - Sarah Medhurst (nee Black) shocked journalists and legal scholars at a press conference held at the Black family estate Monday when she revealed that Black's Law Dictionary, a highly regarded legal reference text, was originally written as a joke by her eccentric great grandfather Henry Campbell Black.

Medhurst appeared unapologetic, suggesting that the Black family had never tried very hard to keep it a secret. "Have any of you actually taken the time to read it?” she asked, flipping open the renowned text. “Look at page 840 for instance. 'John-a-Nokes'? Or how about page 347? 'Correality – the quality or state of being correal." She then cast a challenging look around the room.

So what does all of this mean?

This my friend, means two things.

1. That capitus diminutio is not real and holds no legal bearing and

2. That Black's Law Dictionary is a hoax and opens up an entirely new can of worms having to do with the fact that it is cited in countless legal situations because:

Black's Law Dictionary is the most widely-used law dictionary for the law of the United States. It was founded by Henry Campbell Black. It has been cited as legal authority in many Supreme Court cases (see Secondary authority). The latest editions, including abridged and pocket versions, are useful starting points for the layman or student when faced with an unfamiliar legal word. It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions.

Does anyone realize the magnitude of this screw up?