It grows in popularity, this 795 year old document.
Not here, where it was written, I hasten to add. This is an update to the story I ran a week or so ago about Georgia's Representative Franklyn, and his plans to introduce a law called The Right To Travel Act.
It is most interesting.
Look:
10 LC 34 2350
House Bill 875
By: Representative Franklin of the 43rd
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT
AN ACT
To amend Title 40 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to motor vehicles and traffic, so as to repeal Chapter 5, relating to drivers' licenses; provide for a short title; to report the findings of the General Assembly regarding the constitutionality of certain laws relating to drivers' licenses; to provide for an effective date; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF GEORGIA:
SECTION 1.
This Act shall be known and may be cited as the "Right to Travel Act."
SECTION 2.
The General Assembly finds that:
(1) Free people have a common law and constitutional right to travel on the roads and highways that are provided by their government for that purpose. Licensing of drivers cannot be required of free people because taking on the restrictions of a license requires the surrender of an inalienable right;
(2) In England in 1215, the right to travel was enshrined in Article 42 of Magna Carta:
It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and Merchants who shall be treated as it is said above.
(3) Where rights secured by the Constitution of the United States and the State of Georgia are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation that would abrogate these rights. The claim and exercise of a constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime. There can be no sanction or penalty imposed upon an individual because of this exercise of constitutional rights;
(4) American citizens have the inalienable right to use the roads and highways unrestricted in any manner so long as they are not damaging or violating property or rights of others. The government, by requiring the people to obtain drivers' licenses, is restricting, and therefore violating, the people's common law and constitutional right to travel;
(5) In Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Potter Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that the right to travel "is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association...it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all." The Articles of Confederation had an explicit right to travel; and we hold that the right to travel is so fundamental that the Framers thought it was unnecessary to include it in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights;
(6) The right to travel upon the public highways is not a mere privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will but the common right which every citizen has under his or her right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Under this constitutional guarantee one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his or her inclination along the public highways or in public places while conducting himself or herself in an orderly and decent manner; and
(7) Thus, the legislature does not have the power to abrogate the citizens' right to travel upon the public roads by passing legislation forcing the citizen to waive the right and convert that right into a privilege.
SECTION 3.
Title 40 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to motor vehicles and traffic, is amended by repealing Chapter 5, relating to drivers' licenses, and designating said chapter as reserved.
SECTION 4.
This Act shall become effective upon its approval by the Governor or upon its becoming law without such approval.
SECTION 5.
All laws and parts of laws in conflict with this Act are repealed.
The US wesite where this can be found is here.
Tip of the beret to Twitterer Guido Forks. Thanks mate!
CR.
I want to have your babies! This is powerful stuff which gives us all something to work with, develop and instigate. I'm convinced that the like minded within the freedom movement can capitalise on this.
ReplyDeleteIn fact this leads me to another point, which may be relevant at this time.
I am (was) an engineer by trade. When we were designing/developing a new theory we would normally create flow diagrams etc. Then we would have to test & develop all practical results & draw conclusions as to the negative or positive endings, and only by doing this could we move forward.
Now let's take the freedom movement. We have thousands of different solutions doing the rounds to one problem, it makes your head spin. Very few have shown success or failure & so I feel we are all going round in circles.
I believe what needs to be done is we focus on one thing, with one solution. We adapt/improve/tweak that one solution until it gets the required result.
A great example of this is John Hirst vs Council Tax (which incidentally needs all our support). If John wins we have the solution to Council Tax. Then we attack all the other problems, one by one!
So.... just a thought (after a few glasses of red)
Great work CR
IanG, for what it's worth I think you have a sensible approach there.
ReplyDeleteI have been reading libertarian blogs like this (thanks CR) for a few months now. I know what the 'problem' is - or at least what I detest about the UK seems to more or less agree with what other folks round here don't like.
I want to do something about it but I have no contacts or levers and there are so many possible actions, so much fragmented information, but somehow nothing to really get to grips with that I entirely understand and trust to work on a real practical level.
So I think your suggested approach is excellent. Agree on one key issue - council tax would seem to be as good as any - and concentrate resources into legally and non-violently breaking it. Done properly once one part of the great con falls the rest has to follow
Driving is a commercial activity perhaps ,like when people used to drive livestock to market.However travelling is merely moving from place to place.
ReplyDeletedriver (drī′vər)
ReplyDeletenoun
1. a person who drives; specif.,
1. one who drives an automobile, team of horses, etc.
2. one who herds cattle
trav·el·er or trav·el·ler (trvl-r, trvlr)
n.
1. One who travels or has traveled, as to distant places.
2. often traveller Chiefly British
a. A traveling salesperson.
b. A member of any of various groups of traditionally itinerate people living especially in Scotland and Ireland.
IanG, you raise a very valid point.
ReplyDeleteIMO, a repository for relevant work, solutions, facts etc. would be helpful.
Indexed, catalogued and filed.
But we need some admin to colate, investegate and verify what goes in.
It would need a dedicated site with trust, honour and respect.
Big ask but not impossible.
Woodsy42 & Defender I will have a look further into this & see what I/we can come up with. I design & build websites in my spare time so I might be able to do something along these lines.
ReplyDeleteIanG,
ReplyDeleteI have spent a working life messing with web stuff too. And there was me thinking now I have retired I need never update one again!
Let me know what sort of resource you have in mind, maybe I can help.
Does the good Capt. have a note of our email addreses rather than post details here?
"Does the good Capt. have a note of our email addreses rather than post details here?"
ReplyDeleteHe does not. The good Captain believes that there is far too much snoopage going on already. He will not even attempt to ferret out details that he has no right to look at.
However, if you wish to email me*, please do so using this address:
captainranty at btinternet dot com
CR.
* Bearing in mind that privacy and the internet are now only distant relations. The sneaky bastards hold every email in a big fat folder somewhere.
See
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fmotl.com/forum/
and book:
Freedom Is More Than Just A Seven-Letter Word
a book by Veronica: of the Chapman family
Yer chum Dave
Thanks Capt.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think you personally would want to be be snooping, but wondered if Blogger might have told you about commentators anyhow. After all it does belong to Google and there are a few questions about how far they poke their nose! Presumably they store the info only for their own use.
CR. The issue of the legality of licensing activities that are common law rights of the subject was considered in the Bancoult Judgment in 2001:
ReplyDelete151. Mr Crow submits nevertheless that the Crown's subjects inhabiting BIOT had in public law no right of abode, and nothing of which they could therefore be deprived. It is common ground that this would not be the position in the United Kingdom. The right is fundamental and, in the informal sense in which that term is necessarily used in a United Kingdom context, constitutional. Chapter 29 of Magna Carta provides that "No freeman shall be …. exiled …. but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land". Blackstone (Commentaries on the Laws of England Book I, p 136) states the position in these terms:
"A natural and regular consequence of this personal liberty is, that every Englishman may claim a right to abide in his own country so long as he pleases; and not to be driven from it unless by the sentence of the law. The king indeed, by his royal prerogative, may issue out his writ ne exeat regno, and prohibit any of his subjects from going into foreign parts without licence. …. But no power on earth, except the authority of parliament, can send any subject out of the land against his will; no, not even a criminal. For exile, and transportation, are punishments at present unknown to the common law; …."
The power which Shakespeare records that Richard II, with the advice of his Council, exercised in banishing Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, (King Richard II, Act I, Sc. III) had by the time of Blackstone long since disappeared. In the Divisional Court in Bancoult I Laws LJ cited international text-book and case-law authority to like effect to Blackstone: see also Chalmers' Opinions of Eminent Lawyers (1814), vol 1, p 4 and Joseph Chitty, A Treatise on The Law of the Prerogatives of the Crown (1820) p 21. In R v Bhagwan [1972] AC 60, Lord Diplock identified the right of a British subject at common law "to enter the United Kingdom without let or hindrance when and where he pleased and to remain here as long as he listed" (p 74B-C), and of such subjects "to go wherever they like within the realm" (p 77G). In respect of persons who were British citizens by virtue of their connection with a part of the Commonwealth other than the United Kingdom, that right was from 1962 onwards made subject progressively to statutory qualifications: see R v Bhagwan and R v Governor of Pentonville Prison, Ex p Azam [1974] AC 18 (CA). Thus, from 1973 when the Immigration Act 1971 came into force, all Commonwealth citizens entering the United Kingdom without leave were liable to prosecution. But the common law right to enter and remain within the United Kingdom remains unchanged in respect of those with British citizenship based on their connection with the United Kingdom.
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2008/61.html
The DVLA will not like this one (g).
Woodsy,
ReplyDeleteYou are far too generous.
I would have said that Google store the info until they can sell it.
:)
CR.
magnacartasocietyblog
ReplyDeleteHey John, you say the DVLA will not like this one (g), do you mean - "to go wherever they like within the realm"?
If so, playing devils advocate it doesn't say "without levy"
IanG,
ReplyDeleteMagna Carta Ch. 40 covers it:
“ To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice....”.
Firearm and shotgun certificates should be free as well. Black powder licences, which should be certificates, were free until recently. I am not sure about passports.
Regards, John Hurst.