 Welcome to Law and Government for Teens. This is a course of study to empower self-governing citizens of tomorrow to own and operate the United States. Unlike citizens of other nations, the U.S. citizen does not answer to a sovereign government. The United States was created by authority of citizens, and it only exists to serve its citizen owners. This is the understanding of law and government that has not been taught to previous generations. In the lecture portion of this course, I provide information and perspective that open the subject before you. The larger portion of this course will be your efforts in understanding what we have and learning to deal effectively with your citizen presentials. This course is designed to empower students as they become the citizens of tomorrow. My name is Jess Brogan. I'm a performance engineer who happens to have a law degree. What you will see is how, at the founding of our nation, the reins of government were allowed to slip out of our hands. Dusty from lack of use, they still lie idle on the ground before our feet. This is training for picking them up, choosing your direction, and applying the whip as needed to get things moving. You can be at peace with this. It is not revolution. There is no need to revolt against what you own. This is how citizens can establish that management over their nation, which promotes the American dream of self-government. The purpose of this course is to prepare you for effective citizenship, and the lessons provided are designed to give you information and perspective to understand the legal foundations that will apply to you, to your classmates, families, neighbors, and society. Like most human subjects, law involves a large number of sources and serves a multitude of purposes. Our first task is to separate this survey course from the education that some of you are likely to receive later in law school, and that separation is by purpose. The purpose of this course is to provide a citizen foundation for understanding the common law of the United States. The law school purpose is to prepare legal advocates. The purpose of law school is not development of citizens but development of legal practitioners. These are people who can work in our current legal environment and resolve the challenges people face in dealing with the law. Law schools are a success when their graduates become practicing attorneys. It is when their graduates are paid for their expertise and knowledge of current law and procedure. It is an economic purpose that supports the continuation of the school as an institution that delivers professional value to their students. The different purpose of this course is focused on the needs of teenagers, the needs to grow and mature into effective and knowledgeable citizens. It is support for taking an effective part in running our nation. This is intentionally presented to support a student's advancement from being a subject of education provided by others into becoming an effective and independent adult citizen. This course is a success when you are empowered to own and operate the United States. These lessons may also be useful as a review for adults or as an introduction for any adults who find themselves with insufficient foundation to be effective owners of this nation. The focus on these lectures is very different than might be found in graduate law schools. It is knowledge of law itself and the interaction between law and civilization with specific focus on understanding and appreciating the laws that define our nation and its legal systems. The questions we ask may be simple, but the answers are not. It starts with the question of why parents have rules that children are expected to honor. Six year old Terry, in accord with slapstick comedy from an old movie, puts mashed potatoes on a spoon and snaps it forward, throwing the food on his sister Betty's blouse. Rising up, his father sends him immediately from the table telling him, stay away until I call you back. Terry is not allowed to eat with a family that day and stays hungry until long after the others have left the table. His food when he gets there is cold. The family is a mini society and parents regulate it for the benefit of all family members. Terry is not allowed to enjoy the society of others at the table when his action prevents those others from enjoying their meal. Terry did not even consider ruining the meal for others, but tried to amuse them. Good intentions often have to be constrained by law. And for perspective, we address the coming of a baby into a family. Parents decide what the baby is to eat, where the baby is to sleep, and where the baby is to go. People who are not competent to make their own decisions have to be dependent upon those who care for them. In the United States, we have not previously been trained to be confident in making our government decisions, and that task has thus been assumed by those who are no better than we are. A new set of challenges arises as the infant grows into a child with odd awareness of his or her surroundings, some knowledge of personal wants and needs. The child soon recognizes potentials for satisfaction. Young children start early to demand attention when it is withheld. They are likely to push away things they do not want and go after what they do. Even young children seem increasingly to be mobile and respond to language. Parents are still in charge of their welfare. Parents are still responsible for the life and behavior of the infant and young child. This continues even where the child engages in early efforts to harness the family environment to meet some of his or her wants and needs. Self-determination still has to wait. But young children do grow and mature. The young child situation only changes when he or she becomes proficient in taking care of personal needs. It is then usually around the age of five that the child can be set into an educational environment. Then educators decide what the new students are and are not to do. The students are given rules in order to see that their behavior in dealing with others and educators is effective. The teachers become the rulers of the classroom and are generally granted in local parental authority a legal term for in place of a parent. As students grow and mature they continue to learn how to best see to their own purposes. Commonly in the 12 to 13 year range student relationships with each other and the educators begins to change. Students are expected to start making some of their own decisions on what they do in relation to others. It is in the teenage years that the slavish dependence upon adults is softened. Sometimes referred to as the age of rebellion teenagers begin to demand the right to make more and more of their own decisions. And now we need to expand our vision bringing what we see in the family to focus on the extended family, the tribe. The tribe is a group of families that live in close proximity. They are able to do things together getting the effect of cooperative and coordinated efforts for the benefit of all members of the tribe. There may be a tribal leader, a chief spokesman for the tribe, but the authority is almost always in a council of family leaders. The families are generally not subject to the authority of the leader but accept coordination for the obvious benefits of being in the tribe. If a family no longer feels welcome they can pick up and leave the tribe accepting the cost of change in order to gain benefits on the outside. The tribal council keeps the peace and can generally make and enforce such rules as seem appropriate to the families in the tribe. There are tribal laws. In wider society beyond the tribe people face other challenges. In larger corporate groups we see the need for concentration of authority in a leader. With wider needs coercion becomes reasonable. Perhaps the earliest such authority is granted to military leaders and ships captains. The survival of soldiers requires that they trust one another to work as a unit. Ships at sea survive because the crew and officers work together to make things happen. In both these cases the environment demands coordination of effort and leaders are granted authority to achieve coordination even over the objection of individuals who might deny that authority. Enforcement is supported not because the authority is right or proper but as a necessity for survival. When we come to territory-driven rules we have a different concept, a concept of public authority. It is that tricky subject of sovereignty that rests in some leader or family. It is authority to take actions for the benefit of having an ordered society. Territorial governance provides a basis for formal law for established rules of conduct and requirements that arise from a sovereign authority. For the student of law the focus must be on the right or privilege of some people to rule over other people. The general assumption is benevolence where the ruler will take care for those he rules as if they were extended family. The simple reality is also family but that the ruler has a family that is always to be served first. The needs and wants of the ruler's family are to be served before those who are ruled. That is human and it's a human flaw in the concept of benevolent rule. All people have their own priorities and putting one decision maker and rule over another comes with this as a natural challenge. We also have early experience with small democracies where people came together in agreement on it as a basis for local government. These had some successes but were temporary ceasing to exist after a time. The probable cause of their untimely failure was difficulty in getting people to agree on the necessary and convenient actions. Outside of the military command and ships officers there was little expertise in assuring useful agreement among a populace. Even if the intent was self-government there was little knowledge available to the democratic populace. Democracies tended to be short-lived. All early legal governance was structured around territory or land. By far the most successful and stable form of government was feudal with a feud being a grant of authority over a territory. Feudal systems of government lasted over a thousand years much longer than even our national republic. The simplest form of feudal governance was example by the city-state. This was a single city or small kingdom ruled over by a feudal owner family that provided governance for the territory under rule. The family leader was the royal ruler with children raised to be rulers in their turn. In more advanced form internal feudal territories are given to subordinate rulers who are then allowed allegiance to the granting authority of the sovereign ruler. Each feudal subordinate was to operate their feudal territory as part of a larger kingdom and to get their family living from that effort. Management authority was granted to these subordinates and they took responsibility for maintaining the king's rule in their territories and otherwise supporting the central rule. The king became the source of law with application through landed subordinates. The entire system of governance worked on the basis of land owner privileges. Where the privilege of being a landed subordinate was supported by enforcing royal rule the subordinate leaders families also tended to inherit their local rule and accordingly brought up their children to be subordinate rulers. When it worked properly the peasants were highly valued by their landed lord because the efforts of peasants were the Lord's source of family income. Having the privilege of land ownership only earned wealth if the people on the land were productive. Only the peasants actually produced value keeping the peasants content and at peace secured the benefit of wealth and feudal aristocracy and so we have the formation of a common law to keep the peace among the common people and to support their safety and dealing cooperatively among themselves. The common law was a people's law. It was supported by those who ruled because it assured their family wealth and prosperity. The feudal lord who tried to abuse the peasants would soon have no peasants. They would abandon his lands to serve other feudal lords leaving the abusive leader with a shrinking income to meet royal demands. A good peasant was highly valued by the landed leader. A good landed leader was highly valued by the royal ruler and the system was accordingly quite stable. The king applied the royal law to keep the subordinate landed lords loyal and supported the common law to keep the common people effective. If a landed subordinate got out of line losing the support of the peasants so that the land suffered neglect or misuse the king could replace the subordinate. The deeper challenge was the competence of the king. There was no way to recover from a bad king. One whose central rule interfered with the feudal grants of authority or put stresses on the peasants to interfere with the operation of the feuds. The uprising of feudal peasants to depose a bad king or ruler is largely a myth. Something that might happen to a city state but not in a well-established feudal system the peasants were cared for. They were the source of wealth for the privileged leaders. In England we have an example of an effective deposing of a feudal king but it was not by the people. It was by the landed barons whose privilege was being challenged by a bad king. If you wish further information you may research the signing of the Magna Carter in the year of 1215. This is long before even the European discovery of the Americas. In our US history many have addressed the revolution that caused the founding of our nation in terms of rejection of feudal rule. This is largely myth. There were no feuds in the American colonies. Feudalism only worked where the feudal baron had to live on the feud with the welfare of the feudal family and royal privilege tied to assuring the productive efforts of the people on the land. There were no landed barons in the American colonies. There were no feudal chiefs who would assure their own wealth and privilege through the productivity of those who work their granted feudal lands. There was rather an attempt to harvest wealth from the colonies as a business venture. The challenge was taxation without the protection of having a voice in British government. The laws of England were largely continued in the American colonies even after the revolution forced separation. This law except for royalty and feudal privilege became the law of the newly forming United States. Much of our law came from common law in England. One primary distinction from other legal systems is that the US common law formally recognizes the inherent value of the common person. In feudal times this was value in the peasant, the tradesman, whose product of activity was the source of wealth or privileged feudal lords. In more modern times it is value in citizens without any need to support any ruling aristocracy. The common law was not the king's law, it was not created by edicts and decrees signed by the king. The common law was built on supporting the peasants as a royal family source of national wealth and privilege. Where ownership of land was the ultimate privilege, harvesting that privilege required a populace to work the land. The common law saw to this purpose. The ultimate source of the common law is a national institution is the king supporting this law because it preserved the people who were the real source for the feudal king's wealth and privilege. A government of productive people has a tax base, a source of income for the privileged landowners. A government that has no people to govern would have no income, no wealth, no privilege. This common law foundation was formalized in the United States through a written agreement we call the Constitution. This is why our government needs to be focused on taking care of people. Bringing the English version of common law into the basis for the newly forming United States faced one significant challenge. The greatest challenge was sovereignty in the people and especially its impact on the laws of contract and agency. Both of these impacted on the address of the legality of the authorities and processes used to establish this new government. English citizens could legally establish governing bodies through a compact that was already well settled. They could authorize government but only subordinate to the authority of an established sovereign entity. The same was the source for colonial legislatures. While they were recognized as bodies of governance, they were also considered legally subordinate to the governors who had authority from the crowd. The courts of law generally enforced the common law of England prior to the revolution. The London government was months away and the impact of British rule was non-immediate. There was the challenge of practicality and relying upon overseas enforcement of day-to-day applications. The colonial governments other than the governments themselves were people by those popularly chosen. This is our source for a concept of rule by consent of the governed. Such things were largely trashed by the revolution and had to be restored locally by the people in the colonies following the revolution. The lack of sovereignty and government left many matters to chance including the overall authority of government to act on behalf of the people. With constitutional agreement we have effective establishment of sovereignty in the common citizen. This was so new a concept that it had no specific applications. We had the principles of sovereignty but not as might support personal interactions. The only existing influence of sovereignty was upon the common law and it was that sovereign authority could modify English common law almost at will. As long as citizens were dealing with citizens as equals the common law could continue as it had. The challenge came with citizen relationship with government. When the people dealt with governance it reversed their roles. The common law was suddenly elevated to be the source of national authority. It implemented the concept of consent of the governed in a whole new way and elevated it to a previously unheard of status. The compact initiated by our constitutional agreement was to create the supreme law of the land but it still had to do it under authority of an agreement in consent of the governed or it had no legitimate basis. Our first subject for study is the foundation for our US legal system. It is contained in a truly awesome document commonly known as the Constitution. The name does not say at all that this document does set up and empower a government by and under the law but it is not some governing document that sets the authorities and limitations of those who would govern. Empowerment and limitation of leaders is not even within the larger purpose of this remarkable legal instrument. You will find that the Constitution documents an agreement among we the people to how we the people intend to govern ourselves. The American states participated only as citizen representatives. The empowerment and limitations placed on leaders is a secondary matter to the larger purpose of self-government. This is most remarkably noted by discontinuities. Prior to the signing of this document there were no states in the Americas. Only colonial government stripped of their authority through rejecting the authority under which they had become colonies. There were no people of the United States, only former British citizens who had been set adrift by revolution. The idea that this was just people arranging for a new sovereign authority to rule over them would be wholly inaccurate. This was something utterly new. There was no traditional authority in the common people to establish new governments nor for a citizen to empower someone else to be an authority over their neighbors. The story of our foundation just starts with the success of the colonial army expelling the authority of Britain by armed conflict, disrupting our only legitimate source of sovereignty. Colonial development started by assuming sovereignty. It is in the existing elements of government the colonial bodies. These colonial governments had confederated, forming a sort of central government that was subordinate to the sovereign authorities that had been assumed by the states. Rather than being a national foundation, it functioned as a pact between the states, a treaty addressing how they agreed to live in harmony. But of course colonial government bodies had no recognized right to rule except within the strictures of British government. The people did not consider colonial governments as centers of sovereignty and ended up challenging the right of these bodies to tax them. It was in this environment that the Constitutional Convention was put in place by the various colonies to derive a government that would be able to function. It had to have such legitimacy that it could be accepted by the people as the government with authority. And so this convention met with the purpose of establishing a government to such an effect that it could command the support of both the people in the former colonies and those who were part of the colonial governments then providing public services. It is in this environment that we have the bold statement that begins our founding document as we the people of the United States. This is an incredible claim that there are people forming their own government and that this new government is tied to purposes as set forth in the written preamble to the larger Constitution. The common address of this document is that it empowers and limits a sovereign government, ignoring the preamble as some sort of wish list that the framers appended to it as a way to get people to accept its sovereignty. I tell you now that the stated purpose for an agreement among people is not a wish list. As we'll be more thoroughly examined in the subject of contract law, it is the heart of the agreement. The rest of the document, the articles are only there to implement the purpose of the people who enter into the larger agreement. In the case of our government, the preamble provides the public purpose for this new government and the purpose and the purpose that continues to legitimize its existence. Any failure to stick to this purpose goes to the heart of the agreement and would delegitimize the government. We commonly find this document titled the Constitution or the Constitution of the United States. While this agreement can serve the function of defining government in accord with the details of the articles, that is not its basis for agreement. It is an agreement by and among the people and the states as representatives of the people concerning the establishment and ordination of a legal government. The people are the source of government authority, not the enumerated powers and limits written into the agreement. The national sovereignty is subordinate to the sovereignty of the people. Our national government can only legitimately do what people can legitimately do. Wherever the people lack authority to do something, our representative government is also without authority to act. Wherever the people have recognized authority as individuals, there is no power in government to disrupt that personal authority. The clearest of all situations is the authority to form the Union, which is the United States. This is under the authority of individuals who are we the people in whose name the government is authorized to exist. Self-governance is the sacred center of citizenship within the United States. The government created under the terms of this agreement is not in power to redefine itself, nor is it authorized to establish and pursue some new purposes.