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“Oath or Affirmation” of Office

An implied constitutional power for public officials to create “official immunities” for themselves would allow  them to negate the express requirement that they shall be “bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution”.

Last Updated on August 20, 2022 by Constitutional Militia

“Oath or Affirmation” of Office (Article VI, Clause 3)

The very existence of the Oath[s] or Affirmation[s]” that officeholders are required to take as a condition of their offices excludes the possibility of immunity from punishment for any officeholder who perjures or otherwise forswears himself. For example, when a member of Congress or State legislator knowingly, with willful blindness, or in reckless disregard of the consequences of his action votes for a statute that unconstitutionally suppresses the Militia, or supplants them with a garrison or police state; or when the President or State Governor knowingly refuses to veto such a statute, and instead excuse it; or when a “Judge[ ], either of the supreme and inferior Courts”[1] of the General Government, or of any State, knowingly declares such such a statute valid and enforceable—each and every one of them violates his “Oath or Affirmation of Office”.[2]

The Constitution itself provides for one and only one “official immunity”, in its allowance that, “for any Speech or Debate in either House [of Congress], [Senators and Representatives] shall be questioned in any other place”.[3] Talk alone by those officers in that particular setting only is thus absolutely privileged, no matter how obnoxious, because thoroughgoing “Speech or Debate” should dissuade any honest member of Congress from voting for an unconstitutional statute. But, as the Constitution plainly implies, the action of so voting, and the ultimate untoward effects of a statute so enacted are quite different matters.  Self-evidently because the Constitution recognizes only this lone official immunity from liability for misuse of public office, no other can be interpolated into it for any other officeholder or any other official action. Inclusio unius exclusio alterius.[4]

An implied constitutional power for public officials to create “official immunities” for themselves would allow  them to negate the express requirement that they shall be “bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution”—and therefore cannot enter public office in the first instance, or act under color of it thereafter, without first taking  and then continually abiding by such “Oath or Affirmation”.  So even if by some twisting of words, such an implication could be imputed  to some other part of the Constitution, it would fall afoul of the rule that if “an asserted construction of any one provision of the Constitution would, if adopted, neutralize a positive prohibition of that instrument, then * * * such asserted construction is erroneous, since its enforcement would mean, not to give effect to the Constitution, but to destroy a portion thereof”.[5] The Constitution, after all, is not self-contradictory. So the affirmative words “shall be bound by” are are plainly “negative of other objects than those affirmed’; and “an exclusive sense must be given to them, or they have no operation at all”.[6]

No statute of limitations can foreclose “Impeachment” and “Conviction”,[1] criminal prosecution,[2] or some other sanction for public official’s violation of his constitutional “Oath or Affirmation”. After all, the harm an unconstitutional statute, executive or administrative order, or judicial decision inflicts on society does not end with its enactment or enunciation, but continues everyday the evil screed remains on the books, to be executed, enforced, or treated as a precedent, or even simply to threaten people through its mere existence. And so long as a single one of those harms continues to beset society, the officeholders responsible —including not only those who originated the offensive statute, order, or decision, but also all others who thereafter refused to repeal, revoke, overrule, or otherwise invalidate it, or worse yet enforced or relied upon it—remain liable.[3]

Footnotes:

1.) U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 5 and §3, cls. 6 and 7 ; and art. II, § 4.

2.) See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242. See U.S. Const. art I, § 3, cl. 7.

3.) Constitutional “Homeland Security”, Volume I, The Nation in Arms, by Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., page 70.

1.) U.S. Const. art. III, § 1.

2.) U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 3.

3.) U.S. Const. art. I § 6, cl. I (emphasis supplied). In the same place, the Constitution also privileges Members of Congress with limited immunity from “Arrest” at certain times. This, however does not immunize them from any liability to be imposed at other times.

4.) “The inclusion of one is the exclusion of the other.”

5.) South Dakota v. North Carolina, 192 U.S. 286, 328 (1904) (White J., dissenting).

6.) Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 174 (1803).

7.) See RESOLUTION OF THE FIRST CONGRESS SUBMITTING TWELVE AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION (4 March 1789), in Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States, House Document No. 938, 69th Congress, 1st Session (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1927), at 1063.

8.) Constitutional “Homeland Security”, Volume I, The Nation in Arms, by Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., page 70

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Constitutional Militia are State government institutions, thoroughly civilian in character. It is by the efforts of "the Militia of the several States", that the "security of a free State" can be preserved throughout the Union.
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