[extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Karen Rand Smigrodzki <Karen at smigrodzki.org> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Lorrey"
> > So I suppose we need to make the public as aware of Hale v Henkel
> > (201 US 43 (1905)) as they are of Roe v Wade and Miranda,
> > specifically: "The individual may stand upon his constitutional
> > rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his own private
> > business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He
> > owes no duty to the State or his neighbors to divulge his business,
> > or to open his doors to investigation, so far as it may tend to
> > incriminate him. He owes  no such duty to the State, since he
> > receives nothing there-from, beyond the protection of his life
> > and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the
> > land long antecedent to the organization of the State... He owes
> > nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their
> > rights."
> >
> > This citation should be in the legal ammo box of any cryonicist.
> >
> > >
>          No, it shouldn't, Mike. Anyone citing this case for almost
> any reason would be laughed out of court. Especially so if they cite
> the case for the proposition you suggest.  (First of all, a minor
> note, the case year is 1906, not 1905). Secondly, the case has
> *nothing* to do with bodies or corpses or their disposition or
> their classification in the law or whether they become property of
> an estate or not. Your quotation from the case has nothing to do
> with those ideas either; also, it is dicta -- not relevant to
> the holding of the case. Also, important parts of the case were
> overruled some years later. That overruling is not important to the
> discussion though since the case has *nothing* to do with the ideas
> of the body as property or ownership in a body or rights to provide
> for the disposition of one's corpse after death.
>         The case arose in a grand jury investigation of anti-trust
> violations under the Sherman Act. The case presented the questions of
> whether a grand jury had authority to subpoena a witness (an officer
> of the corporation under investigation) and mandate he present
> documentation of the corporation when no charges had been filed and
> when by such actions the witness, as agent of the corporation, may
> give self-incriminating (the "self" being the corporation)
> information .
>         The Court held that the grand jury does not need to file a
> formal charge before examining witnesses.

This is part of the problem for cryonics, though, isn't it? I die, I
get frozen and leave my assets to a trust to finance my freezing and
support my eventual revival and future life, leaving my hypothetical
spouse(s) and kid(s) in the lurch. Said spouses and kids use grand jury
subpoenas to force my cryonics organization to produce the body for
autopsy whereupon it becomes thawed and worth nothing but fertilizer.
With my ass now worthless, the trust I set up to protect my assets
devolves to my survivors, and they win.

Furthermore, grand juries can subpoena all of the notes and other
documents produced by cryonics organization officers and employees, as
was the case with a recent case in which claims of drug induced murder
were made against a cryonics team. In a non-fascist environment, all of
this evidence would be treated as sacredly as doctor-patient privilege,
but caselaw that you mention, that partly overrules Hale v Henkel had a
hand in empowering the grand jury system of today through the
socio-fascist incrementalism of the 20th century.

It is not impossible to seek to reclaim these lost rights. US v Lopez
helped the people reclaim much of their rights which were usurped by
Roosevelt to Reagan era interpretations of what 'interstate commerce'
regulatory powers actually empower congress to regulate.

Nor is dicta commentary worthless. While this is a common assumption
among professional lawyers, there is no SCOTUS case that specifically
says that dicta is irrelevant to caselaw. I recall that professional
lawyers, until a couple years ago, claimed the same thing about rulings
on writs of certioari (sp?), but a case came up where the SCOTUS ruled otherwise.

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                                    - Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom

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