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Citizen's Rule Book
I fought the law and the law won Pseudolaw |
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Traveling us crazy |
The Citizen's Rule Book is a ranty, quote mine-filled pamphlet published by, well, somebody (it's believed to have been written by one or more white supremacists)[1] espousing a Christian fundamentalist slant on governing the United States and a juror's right to engage in jury nullification.
As is often the case with propaganda literature involved with right-wing extremist groups, the Rule Book attempts to make a rather muddled case that the US government is founded on Christian principles (the Ten Commandments appear quite prominently), and invokes all the usual bugbears of the 13th (abolition of slavery), 14th (full citizenship to all born in the US, regardless of race) and 16th (income tax) amendments, even going so far as to question the validity of any Constitutional amendment since the 12th (added in 1803), as well as a brief attack on the 17th amendment (direct election of Senate).
As might be expected it's very popular with Alex Jones and others of his ilk.
WARNING: In cases where the Rule Book or the arguments espoused within it have been brought up, US courts have been known to dismiss jurors for having read the book on presumption of being lawless wingnut whackadoodles. You should read it anyway, on the presumption that it's better to know your enemy.
See also
- The Annotated Citizen's Rule Book: A partial refutation by RationalWiki. (It doesn't really need a refutation from us, but check it out anyway.)
Further reading
- Text at Geocities, via the Wayback Machine.
- The US Constitution at Cornell Law School
- Wikipedia on Citizens Rule Book
References
- ↑ A member of the white supremacist Phinehas Priesthood
named Verne Jay Merrell claimed authorship in his 1997 trial for bank robbery; however, the St. Petersburg Times claimed it was first printed in 1976 by a Phoenix printer named Charles Olsen. See Bernard J. Sussman's Idiot Legal Theories, at adl.org.