11th February 2025
Those saying that Orders of the Court can be freely defied should be careful what they wish for
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Imagine a billionaire, and imagine then their billions being somehow, unlawfully confiscated.
These unlawful confiscations could be in terms of their physical possessions being taken away; or titles to their real property being transferred to someone else; or the transfer away of monies in bank accounts and trust funds; or the titles in intangible property, such as intellectual property rights, being fraudulently assigned; or their contractual entitlements being wrongly nullified; or whatever.
Imagine whatever the species of wealth, it was by some unlawful means no longer to be the wealth of the billionaire.
What is the poor billionaire to do?
The billionaire would contact their lawyers, and the lawyers would then take legal actions; if needs be, the lawyers would apply to the Courts for remedies and sanctions, so that the unlawful confiscations are ceased and desisted from, and the property returned, and so on.
Whatever the species of wealth, there will be some legal means for the billionaire’s lawyers to seek legal redress form a court of competent jurisdiction.
And so in each and every case, the lawyers will be seeking an Order of the Court.
And not only would the lawyers be seeking an Order of the Court, they would be expecting that the Order of the Court would be respected and would be enforced.
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The wealth of any billionaire (or of anybody else) is ultimately a bundle of legal rights – in contract, in property, in trusts, and so on.
It is because these rights are enforceable that the wealth exists and accumulates. Unless the legal rights are enforceable, there simply is no wealth.
And any enforceable legal right usually means ready access to an Order of the Court.
But.
If Orders of the Court have no inherent value – that it is open for others to freely disobey the Orders of the Court – then what ultimately depends on Orders of Court becomes suddenly precarious.
Therefore those – billionaires and others – who say that Orders of the Court can be freely defied, on a pick-and-choose basis should be very careful for what they wish for.
For without compliance with Orders of the Court, there cannot be any billionaires.
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This is where we are headed under the Orange One : anarchy. Unless action is taken to stop him and his acolytes.
At the risk of pre-empting “Godwins Rule”, if you “own” the legal system then life is a Cabaret my friend …
Sebastian Haffner’s memoir (“Defying Hitler”) as a trainee within the German legal system during the “legal revolution” sees the Prussian Courts “ignobly capitulated before the Nazis” and in raising his arm in salute prior to taking his final examination he feels “This doesn’t count. This isn’t me. It doesn’t count”. Attending the “military and sporting exercises and ideological indoctrination sessions to prepare them for their great task as the German people’s judges”, Haffner resolves the dilemma of wearing a swastika by rationalising that “it was better to wear the armband and maintain my freedom for a later, greater purpose”. He knows that “acceding to the rules of the game” was to change him into “usable Nazi material” and that the only remnants of dissent were found in the doomed Weimar-era Berlin night-clubs when “the Kammergericht had fallen but the Katakombe stood upright.”
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
A wonderful quote.
It feels like there is some missing context as to what inspired this blog? Is it just events happening on West Atlantic shores or something closer to home?
You can provide your own context. That is the joy of texts and textualism.
You do say “Those saying…” so you are referring to something, but we don’t know what. It feels like there should be a link so we can go and check out what it is that you are referring to.
I can only do so much for my readers.
I’m not sure this is quit eright.
There are ways of protecting possessions without Court Orders, but ultimately they depend on the raw exercise of power by force. As someone said, power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Indeed ultimately a court order depends on someone – typically the state -using force to deliver the result required by the order. For example, if there is an order for possession of a property from a tenant or squatter and that person leaves, s/he will have to be removed by force.
But much better to have done things done in accordance with rules accepted and agreed by society.
I think you’ve more or less nailed it. Going after judges and urging others to ignore court orders works fine when your guy is running the executive, because he’s not going to enforce the orders.
Fail to comply with a court order, risk contempt. So what? He’ll just pardon me. Maybe the bailiffs won’t even bother. So the strategy is I’ve gotta keep my guy and his ideological cohorts in power.
If you fail to do that, well as a billionaire there are other options. Your money is protected by being mostly offshore. The rest of it, come and get it and my army stands in your way. That’s where we are. It’s the death of constitutionalism. It’s not even what’s coming. It’s a line in the sand now behind us.
“For without compliance with Orders of the Court, there cannot be any billionaires.”
Some would say, of course, that there should not be any billionaires!
To quote Wikipedia,
‘This quotation is often incorrectly attributed to Francis M. Wilhoit:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”.
However, it was actually a 2018 blog response by 59-year-old Ohio composer Frank Wilhoit, years after Francis Wilhoit’s death.’
The law is like the Ritz Hotel – available to all – at a price.
Recently bought a copy of A V Dicey The Law Of The Constitution. A veritable treasure trove but I do detect a slight touch of deformation professionelle. The law may be a wonderful edifice but it seems not always applied with quite the same enthusiasm or excellence everywhere.
One quote from chapter 1 “It is a fundamental principle with English lawyers, that Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man, and a man a woman”. Matters have plainly advanced, Parliament can now issue a chit to say that job has been done.
The Orange One and his friends will provide much amusement to us all. Only another 3 years and 9 months to go, enjoy while it lasts.