SovereigntyYick Wo vs Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886):Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. It is indeed, quite true, that there must always be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final decision; and in many cases of mere administration the responsibility is purely political, no appeal except to the ultimate tribunal of the public judgement, exercised either in the pressure of opinion or by means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth "may be a government of laws and not of men." For, the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.Perry vs United States, 294 U.S. 330, 353 (1935):In the United States3, sovereignty resides in the people who act through the organs established by the Constitution. [cites omitted] The Congress as the instrumentality of sovereignty is endowed with certain powers to be exerted on behalf of the people in the manner and with the effect the Constitution ordains. The Congress cannot invoke the sovereign power of the people to override their will as thus declared.Glass vs The Sloop Betsey, 3 Dall 6 (1794):In Europe, the executive is almost synonymous with the sovereign power of a State; and generally includes legislative and judicial authority. When, therefore, writers speak of the sovereign, it is not necessarily in exclusion of the judiciary; and it will often be found that when the executive affords a remedy for any wrong, it is nothing more than by an exercise of its judicial authority. Such is the condition of power in that quarter of the world, where it is too commonly acquired by force or fraud, or both, and seldom by compact. In America, however, the case is widely different. Our government is founded upon compact. Sovereignty was, and is, in the people.United States Constitution, Article 4, Section 4:Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; ....Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition:Republican government. One in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whom those powers are specially delegated. In re Duncan, 139 U.S. 449, 11 S.Ct. 573, 35 L.Ed. 219; Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 22 L.Ed. 627.72 American Jurisprudence 2d, Section 4:Save only as they are subject to the prohibitions of the Constitution, or as their action in some measure conflicts with the powers delegated to the national government or with congressional legislation enacted in the exercise of those powers, the governments of the states are sovereign within their territorial limits and have exclusive jurisdiction over persons and property located therein.From Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, definition of sovereignty:... [T]he international independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign dictation.From Black's definition of sovereign states:No foreign power or law can have control except by convention. This power of independent action in external and internal relations constitutes complete sovereignty.Jurisdiction over Federal Areas within the States, Volume II, page 46:The Federal Government cannot, by unilateral action on its part, acquire legislative jurisdiction over any area within the exterior boundaries of a State. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the Constitution, provides that legislative jurisdiction may be transferred pursuant to its terms only with the consent of the legislature of the State in which is located the area subject to the jurisdictional transfer.Jurisdiction over Federal Areas within the States, Volume II, page 45:It scarcely needs to be said that unless there has been a transfer of jurisdiction (1) pursuant to clause 17 by a Federal acquisition of land with State consent, or (2) by cession from the State to the Federal Government, or unless the Federal Government has reserved jurisdiction upon the admission of the State, the Federal Government possesses no legislative jurisdiction over any area within a State, such jurisdiction being for exercise entirely by the State ....Jurisdiction over Federal Areas within the States, Volume II, page 4:By this means some thousands of areas have become Federal islands, sometimes called "enclaves," in many respects foreign to the States in which they are situated. In general, not State but Federal law is applicable in an area under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the United States2, for enforcement not by State but Federal authorities, and in many instances not in State but in Federal courts.Jurisdiction over Federal Areas within the States, Volume II, page 7:Once a State has, by one means or another, transferred jurisdiction to the United States2, it is, of course, powerless to control many of the consequences; without jurisdiction, it is without the authority to deal with many of the problems, and having transferred jurisdiction to the United States2, it cannot unilaterally capture any of the transferred jurisdiction.Jurisdiction over Federal Areas within the States Volume II, page 6:The vacuum which would exist because of the absence of State law or Federal legislation with respect to civil matters in areas under Federal exclusive legislative jurisdiction has been partially filled by the courts, through extension to these areas of a rule of international law that when one sovereign takes over territory of another the laws of the original sovereign in effect at the time of the taking which are not inconsistent with the laws or policies of the second continue in effect, as laws of the succeeding sovereign, until changed by that sovereign.A Ticket to Liberty, November 1990 edition, page 146:A democracy that recognizes only manmade laws perforce obliterates the concept of Liberty as a divine right.A Ticket to Liberty, November 1990 edition, page 32:As each state is sovereign and not a territory of the United States2, the meaning is clear that state citizens are not subject to the legislative jurisdiction of the United States2. Furthermore, there is not the slightest intimation in the Constitution which created the "United States" as a political entity that the "United States" is sovereign over its creators.United States Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment:Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States2, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States2 and of the State wherein they reside.26 CFR 1.1-1(c):Every person born or naturalized in the United States2 and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen.United States vs Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875):We have in our political system a government of the United States2 and a government of each of the several States. Each one of these governments is distinct from the others, and each has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States2 and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other.Slaughter House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (page 408), 16 Wall. 36, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1873):It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States2 and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.K. Tashiro vs Jordan, 256 P. 545, 549 (1927):That there is a citizenship of the United States2 and a citizenship of a state, and the privileges and immunities of one are not the same as the other is well established by the decisions of the courts of this country. The leading cases upon the subjects are those decided by the Supreme Court of the United States and reported in 16 Wall. 36, 21 L. Ed. 394, and known as the Slaughter House Cases.Ex Parte Knowles, 5 Cal. 300 (1855):A citizen of any one of the States of the union, is held to be, and called a citizen of the United States, although technically and abstractly there is no such thing. To conceive a citizen of the United States who is not a citizen of some one of the States, is totally foreign to the idea, and inconsistent with the proper construction and common understanding of the expression as used in the Constitution, which must be deduced from its various other provisions. The object then to be attained, by the exercise of the power of naturalization, was to make citizens of the respective States.Studies in Constitutional Law: A Treatise on American Citizenship by John S. Wise, Edward Thompson Co. (1906):The language employed by the convention was less careful than that which had been used by Congress in July of the same year, in framing the ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory. Congress had made the qualification rest upon citizenship of "one of the United States3," and this is doubtless the intent of the convention which framed the Constitution, for it cannot have meant anything else.Northwest Ordinance, Section 9, July 13, 1787, The Confederate Congress:... Provided, That no person be eligible or qualified to act as a representative, unless he shall have been a citizen of one of the United States3 three years, and be a resident in the district, or unless he shall have resided in the district three years; ....People vs De La Guerra, 40 Cal. 311, 337 (1870):As it was the adoption of the Constitution by the Conventions of nine States that established and created the United States3, it is obvious there could not then have existed any person who had been seven years a citizen of the United States3, or who possessed the Presidential qualifications of being thirty-five years of age, a natural born citizen, and fourteen years a resident of the United States3. The United States3 in these provisions, means the States united. To be twenty-five years of age, and for seven years to have been a citizen of one of the States which ratifies the Constitution, is the qualification of a representative. To be a natural born citizen of one of the States which shall ratify the Constitution, or to be a citizen of one of said States at the time of such ratification, and to have attained the age of thirty-five years, and to have been fourteen years a resident within one of the said States, are the Presidential qualifications, according to the true meaning of the Constitution.Tax Scam, 1988 edition, pages 138-139:Indeed, just as one may be a "citizen of the United States" and not a citizen of a State; so one apparently may be a citizen of a State but not of the United States. On July 21, 1966, the Court of Appeal of Maryland ruled in Crosse v. Board of Supervisors of Elections, 221 A.2d 431; a headnote in which tells us: "Both before and after the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, it has not been necessary for a person to be a citizen of the United States in order to be a citizen of his state ...." At page 434, Judge Oppenheimer cites a Wisconsin ruling in which the court said this: "Under our complex system of government, there may be a citizen of a state, who is not a citizen of the United States in the full sense of the term ...."People vs De La Guerra, 40 Cal. 311, 342 (1870):I have no doubt that those born in the Territories, or in the District of Columbia, are so far citizens as to entitle them to the protection guaranteed to citizens of the United States2 in the Constitution, and to the shield of nationality abroad; but it is evident that they have not the political rights which are vested in citizens of the States. They are not constituents of any community in which is vested any sovereign power of government. Their position partakes more of the character of subjects than of citizens. They are subject to the laws of the United States2, but have no voice in its management. If they are allowed to make laws, the validity of these laws is derived from the sanction of a Government in which they are not represented. Mere citizenship they may have, but the political rights of citizens they cannot enjoy until they are organized into a State, and admitted into the Union.United States vs Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 891, 893 (1898):There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.Unknown but extremely accurate author:17. Under the Constitutions, "... we the People" did not surrender our individual sovereignty to either the State or Federal Government. Powers "delegated" do not equate to powers surrendered. This is a Republic, not a democracy, and the majority cannot impose its will upon the minority because the "LAW" is already set forth. Any individual can do anything he or she wishes to do so long as it does not damage, injure, or impair the same Right of another individual. This is where the concept of a corpus delicti comes from to prove a "crime" or a civil damage.A Welcome to U.S.A. Citizenship, page 3, U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, revised October 12, 1988 (M-76):Bouvier's Law Dictionary, 14th Edition, 1870, in definition of United States of America:
The Meaning of American Citizenship
Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization
Today you have become a citizen of the United States of America. You are no longer an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Italian, a Pole. Neither are you a hyphenated-American -- a Polish-American, an Italian-American. You are no longer a subject of a government. Henceforth, you are an integral part of this Government -- a freeman -- a Citizen of the United States of America.
This citizenship, which has been solemnly conferred on you, is a thing of the spirit -- not of the flesh. When you took the oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States you claimed for yourself the God-given unalienable rights which that sacred document sets forth as the natural right of all men.
You have made sacrifices to reach this desired goal. We, your fellow citizens, realize this, and the warmth of our welcome to you is increased proportionately. However, we would tincture it with friendly caution.
As you have learned during these years of preparation, this great honor carries with it the duty to work for and make secure this longed-for and eagerly-sought status. Government under our Constitution makes American citizenship the highest privilege and at the same time the greatest responsibility of any citizenship in the world.
The important rights that are now yours and the duties and responsibilities attendant thereon are set forth elsewhere in this souvenir booklet. It is hoped that they will serve as a constant reminder that only by continuing to study and learn about your new Country, its ideals, achievements, and goals, and by everlastingly working at your citizenship can you enjoy its fruits and assure their preservation for generations to follow.
May you find in this Nation the fulfillment of your dreams of peace and security, and may America, in turn, never find you wanting in your new and proud role of Citizen of the United States.The great men who formed it did not undertake to solve a question that in its own nature is insoluble. Between equals it made neither superior, but trusted to the mutual forbearance of both parties. A larger confidence was placed in an enlightened public opinion as the final umpire. The people parcelled out the rights of sovereignty between the states and the United States2, and they have a natural right to determine what was given to one party and what to the other. ...
It is a maxim consecrated in public law as well as common sense and the necessity of the case, that a sovereign is answerable for his acts only to his God and to his own conscience.
The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension