In 1986 I happened upon a phrase in our Constitution, in Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 3, which states, "No Bill Of Attainder or Ex-post Facto Law, shall be passed." I was reasonably secure I knew what an ex-post facto law was, but I had no idea what a bill of attainder was. I am a Certified Linguist, and the prospect of finding out what a bill of attainder really was led me in 1997 to become the director of a program which is associated with Libertarians and others, and which is called the Bill Of Attainder Project.

As I stated , I am a Certified Linguist. Linguists write encyclopedias, dictionaries, and different texts that define things. They do a lot more, but one of the fundamental things they do is define things. Linguists are usually very pleasant, cerebral people who really enjoy studying the aspects of language. They are scientists, and do what scientists do--they measure things.

For the linguist, as well as for the scientist, the test of whether or not something is a yard long is to put it to the test of thirty-six inches, three feet, or however many other scales are needed to safely establish its length. Proving what constitutes a "Bill of Attainder" is as simple as holding up a yardstick. The yardstick is a little different than the thirty-six inch kind, but very simple. It works along the lines of, "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck".....that simple; you define the "thing" by describing its essential parts. The law does not do this. There is no complete applicable definition of "Bill of Attainder" in the law. Americans deserve to have "Bill Of Attainder" defined into the law in a way that actually protects their rights, and which will not let the legal community and the legislature use the law to plunder.

To establish what a bill of attainder really is requires a trip to the local public library. You saunter in and you start looking up "bill of attainder," and "attainder" in every dictionary and encyclopedia you can lay your hands on. I picked a very small library, and with good reason; I'd still be at some of the larger ones heaping up definitions and descriptions to this day. All you need to establish a definition is enough sources of your target "thing" to present a complete picture. It is a simple comparative analysis, establishing the basic elements of which your target "thing" is composed. Line up your collection of definitions and sources to see what they have in common. My collection of definitions tells me that a "bill of attainder" is a law, or legal device, used to outlaw people, suspend their civil rights, confiscate their property, put them to death, or punish them without a trial. Nothing anyone has sent me has changed the definition I have assembled.

I contend that the original intent of the bill of attainder mandate was to prevent laws that punish without trial, suspend civil liberties, or confiscate property. The doctrine of "pains and penalties" is also included and it has much to do with defining "bill of attainder." A punishment less than death without a trial is considered to be a bill of "pains and penalties." Bills of attainder can be more than one thing, and they can even seem like different things. This is why the elements that constitute a bill of attainder must be included in the law in order to understand the entirety of the phrase "bill of attainder." The integrity of our Constitution has been weakened without the inclusion of this information in the law. It is certain that the original intent of the framers of our Constitution was to protect people from the tyranny Americans had just suffered at the hands of the British Empire. Today's asset forfeiture is almost the exact tyranny that Americans fought against in the Revolutionary War, and almost all the other wars we have fought have been fought for similar reasons. Without "bill of attainder "being defined in the law, the law can ignore the rights Americans are supposed to have. This is what has happened.

The definitions of "bill of attainder" that exist in our current law, the United States Code (U.S.C.), are confusing and incomplete; these definitions do not adequately protect the rights the Framers of our Constitution meant to ensure. Incomplete definitions may even serve to detract from our rights, because they reflect only certain aspects of what a bill of attainder actually is. These definitions come from single, unrelated cases. U.S. v. Brown (1965), U.S. v. Lovett (1946) , and re: Yung See Hee (1888) all qualify the doctrine of pains and penalties as punishment without trial, and thus this doctrine is inclusive within the term "bill of attainder." The only statement in the U.S.C. that reflects most of the original intent of the mandate against bills of attainder is from Cummings v. Missouri (1867). It states, "A bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment."

The preservation of an individual's (or a group's) life, liberty, and property has fallen by the wayside in American law. Any prosecutor who waves the case Calero-Toledo in front a judge takes any property he wants, and in some cases without a trial. It has also been ruled in U.S. v Ursery, that it is not a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause to pursue both criminal and civil punishment in cases arising from the same offense. Further, the Court has allowed the confiscation of property from "innocent owners" without due process. So much for "no Bill(s) of Attainder" being passed by legislative bodies, and so much for any protection the bill of attainder mandate might once have offered. No matter what relevance the mandate may have had in our past, without protection from bills of attainder in our current law we have been robbed of the civil rights our Constitution was meant to preserve.

It is not the purpose of the Bill Of Attainder Project to raise some long-lost Phoenix out of the ashes of our judicial system. The fact is that "goose" has long been cooked; we need a new and fresh start. The term "bill of attainder" must be defined so that all Americans understand the constitutional mandate against bills of attainder and the full extent of their rights. If the Court has to rule on a case where a law is suspect for plundering life, liberty, or property, the suspect law will not go unchallenged if it can be put to the test and revealed as a bill of attainder, thus preserving our rights. The Court is a lost cause for preserving these rights; it must be done with legislation.

All of the aforementioned properties in our definition of "bill of attainder" will stay the same even if you pile on research from all the libraries in the nation. The same is true if you want to pile case law on top of that. Pile up all the bill of attainder references you can get your hands on, from history, government and political science, start a class project, create a fire hazard. The inescapable outcome of your comparative analysis will be that outlawing, suspension of civil rights, confiscation of property, and punishment without a trial, are the primary elements of bills of attainder.

The troubling thing about this discovery is that our current government denies Americans all the rights they are supposed to have, because it fails to protect them from bills of attainder. We have a Supreme Court that believes it is perfectly all right to let the government plunder the life, liberty, or property of anyone who is even associated with a crime--thus "outlawing" them. A growing number of offenses (over 200 in the federal camp alone) are used to take property and suspend civil rights--especially through asset forfeiture programs.

Experts are warning Americans that this country's asset forfeiture programs are starting to cause the same social stresses that were seen in the days of the Inquisition. This was never intended to happen in the United States, as the government was never supposed to have the right to steal (confiscate) property, or suspend civil liberties. The Fifth Amendment clearly states, "No property shall be confiscated."

Nevertheless, it is an absolute fact that for over two-hundred years our government enforced the confiscation of property through the practice of "outlawing." From the beginning, the dominant majority in American society used our legal system to suppress, repress, and oppress different minority groups--most notably African Americans and Native Americans, and to a lesser extent Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and even Irish Americans. It has not always been within the public sympathy to observe constitutional law and guarantee equality, and in the process our understanding of the constitutional mandate against bills of attainder has been compromised.

Since in the past a majority of Americans were dedicated to inequality and special interests, the bill of attainder mandate was put on the sidelines and ignored. Perhaps today Americans have become aware enough to start demanding the rights to which they are entitled. We must begin to understand what our rights are, what our rights were meant to be. Without this understanding our enhanced concern for equality, as expressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, may have made us equal only to the extent that we can be equally plundered.

Our ignorance has brought us to the point where the courts, and even the police, administer bills of attainder. Although our Congress has no right to pass bills of attainder, our Senators and Representatives do not understand this, so they do it anyway. Many sources on bills of attainder state that even when a jury renders a verdict in a trial, the verdict's provisions for punishment must be proportional and they must relate to the crime committed. A verdict must not be confiscatory, and it must not outlaw a person; if a verdict does these things it too has become a "bill of attainder." Constitutional guarantees against bills of attainder were supposed to be absolute, however as long as our courts, our Congress, and the public condone the confiscation of property or the suspension of civil rights as a fit punishment, American civil liberties are lost. Americans do not realize that when they give up their right to private property, they give up the essence of their power as a people. That is what has happened, and we are starting to see the drastic consequences

Our Constitution is replete with provisions that were meant to preserve the right of private property over the right of the government to take property, however these provisions have been abused to the point where there is no protection for private property. The evidence that this was never meant to be is overwhelming. Starting with a quote from Samuel Adams, "Now what liberty is this when property can be taken without permission." Some case law exists that reflects this idea. Cases like, U.S. v Brown, U.S. v Lovett, and Nixon v. U.S., all state the government does not have the right to confiscate property. One is left to wonder if the opposition in the Nixon case had waved Calero-Toledo in front of the Judge, would President Nixon have lost his right to private property? Why did "Tricky Dick" get his right to private property, while the rest of us are plagued with a court and a justice system that can take whatever they have an inclination to take? What is worse, they even manage to justify their plundering of life, liberty, and property!

One of the biggest criticisms of the asset forfeiture plague is the use of "personification" to confiscate property. Personification is the idea that things or objects posses the free will and the capacity to commit crimes. It is an idea deeply rooted in the practice of witchcraft, the occult, and devil worship. Objects are supposed to get that kind of power from the devil, or from a curse. I find it appalling that the Christian community, for the most part, condones this legal practice by the courts of declaring "things" capable of the free will to commit crimes. I want to hear a car, boat, or house walk in, sit down on the witness stand, then testify like "Mr. Ed" the horse, before I will concede that this practice is anything but an evil ploy to steal property. The idea that the American social fabric is suffering from the same social stress as caused in the Inquisition is no exaggeration. The courts are using some of the same terrorist tools as used by Inquisitioners. This was never meant to happen in America. Our constitutional mandate against bills of attainder was meant to prevent the practice of this kind of law and its attendant horrors.

As Americans we must demand our right to be protected from laws that plunder our lives, liberty, and property. This can be accomplished by demanding that the term "bill of attainder" be defined to protect American civil liberties. It is time to define our rights so they cannot be ignored, or abused. Until the basic elements of what constitutes a bill of attainder become defined in American law, the legislatures, the courts, and the police will continue to violate the rights our Constitution was supposed to guarantee every American Citizen. Perhaps we as a people need to understand the warning given by James Madison when he stated, "Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."

References:

* Article 1. Sec. (9), and (10), U.S. Constitution.

* U.S. Commission On Civil Rights CC#93-1-1037

* U.S. v. Brown, (1965) 85 S Ct.1707, U.S. 437 (see also) Communist Party of U.S. v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1961)

* U.S. v. Lovett (1946)

* Yung See Hee, (1888) 36 F. 437

* Cummings v. Missouri (1867) 71 U.S. 277, 323

* Calero-Toledo v. pearson Yaught, (1974) 416 U.S. L 2d 452

* Bennis v. Michigan (1996)

* F.E.A.R. Chronicles, Vol. 3, No.3, p. 11.

* Nixon v. U.S. (1992) 978 F. 2d 1269

For more information:

Thomas M. Saunders
The Bill Of Attainder Project
P.O.Box 584
Colbert, OK 74733