Constitution Week: How Dishonest Lawyers Stole the Randolph Family’s Lawful Inheritance
Sep 20, 2024 by David Fowler
It is appropriate to tell you the heretofore unpublished story about the Randolph family since President Biden, in keeping with previous presidents, proclaimed September 17th Constitution Day and the period from the 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week. Their story will help you make sense of the mess we are in as a country. And I will tell you how to make sure your children and grandchildren don’t fall victim to what happened to them.
The Sad Story of the Once-Prominent and Beloved Randolphs
The Randolphs were a destitute family, living hand-to-mouth on the streets of Nashville. Like others living in the streets, they were under constant threat of danger.
However, their lot was to change after they met an aging former probate lawyer whose prominence in the city had been reduced to that of volunteer at the local soup kitchen by the powerful Holmes family. He took an interest in the Randolphs because he was convinced the couple’s young children were capable of greatness, perhaps even turning around the lives of those living on the city’s streets, if they could just escape their poverty.
Here is what happened and how they were rescued. If need be, skip the next section and pick up with “How the Randolphs Wrongfully Wound Up on the Streets.” Then, I’ll explain their story’s relevance to you.
What the Has-Been Probate Lawyer Learned About the Randolphs
During the lawyer’s interactions with the family, he learned that more than 200 years ago, their ancestors were related to the Calvin family, and they lived on the Calvin’s lavish and sprawling estate. The estate later descended to the Washington family through the marriage of the Calvin’s only child, a daughter, to a Washington.
The estate later descended to the Jeffersons after the Washington’s only daughter, a spinster, died.
The Jeffersons were influential in the community, but they were not cut from the same cloth as the Randolphs and Washingtons. And perhaps that’s why relations between the Randolphs and the Jeffersons began to deteriorate.
Anyway, from there, the estate descended to the Lincoln family, who was related to the Jeffersons, and it had come to rest in the hands of the Holmes family who was related to the Lincolns.
The Holmes clan finally did what the Jeffersons had wanted to do—they kicked the Randolphs off the estate. In time, the Holmes clan, through their wealth, came to control every official in the whole community—think of Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Those officials, by virtue of their allegiance to the Holmes, enjoyed the Holmes’ largess. But their allegiance had resulted in neglect of those they were elected to serve, and the rest of the city’s residents turned against each other trying to survive. That’s where the lawyer found the Calvins.
How the Randolphs Wrongfully Wound Up on the Streets
The lawyer began to do a little digging to see if, perhaps, there had been some mistake in the probate proceedings over the years that had resulted in the Randolphs being kicked off the estate.
To make a long story short, he discovered that the lawyers for the last Lincoln to die had misrepresented the history of the Randolph family’s ancestors to the probate court so as to favor his clients, the Jeffersons, who were more remote ancestors of the Randolphs than the Calvins. Think of a lawyer telling the judge your cousin was the closest living relation who could lawfully inherit from your deceased sibling and hiding the fact of your existence and you get the picture. It didn’t help that the probate judge was part of the Jeffersonian family tree, too.
In sum, the Randolphs got cheated out of their rightful inheritance from the Calvins.
The Happy Ending for the Randolphs and the Perpetual Ignominy of the Holmes Clan
The lawyer took the historical records to the court and, after several years of legal wrangling and appeals, the United States Supreme Court was forced to recognize that the Randolphs were entitled to the estate. They were put in their rightful place.
The Holmes clan, on the other hand, was turned out. As news of the great swindle and the following corruption of the city’s officials spread, the reputation of the Holmes family was not just lost, but became a byword in the community. The family was so despised, the new town officials—the old ones no longer able to buy their elections with Holmes’ money—officially named the city dump “Holmes’ Place,” and the city’s old officials and all judges were scornfully called “Holmesians.”
With the Holmes family displaced, the city was restored to the comparatively peaceful co-existence it had once known.
This story, as you might have guessed, is an allegory. But it is your story and mine when it comes to our Constitution, how its rightful interpretation and authority was “stolen,” and how it can be restored.
How This Allegory Pertains to You
In the story, the Randolphs represent your ancestors and mine, the theological descendants of John Calvin, the Puritans of England. The Calvins, known as Pilgrims, arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
Peyton Randolph, a prominent Randolph family member, was the first president of the Continental Congress that was formed by the colonies in 1774.
The Holmesians are the class of law professors and justices on the United States Supreme Court who now have had a stranglehold on law in our country, and thus, on our country’s direction. The Holmesians represent the final transition from the Calvins to the Randolphs to the (George) Washingtons to the (Abraham) Lincolns.
The Randolphs, Washingtons, and Lincolns lived on a legal “estate” known as common law.
But after the Civil War, the Holmesians, taking their que from the “enlightened” Jeffersonians before them, destroyed that estate through deception, and we Randolphs live with the terrible consequences.
The Inheritance the Crooked Lawyers and Judges Stole
With respect to common law, famed United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, an early force in the development of law in our nation, wrote in 1830:
the common law is our birthright and inheritance and that our ancestors brought hither with them upon their emigration all of it, which was applicable to their situation. The whole Structure of our present jurisprudence stands upon the original foundations of the common law.
His love of and appreciation for common law was opposed by Thomas Jefferson who, following the formation of a united group of states adjectively-called the United States of America, decided he didn’t like common law because it was too Christian in its foundational precepts.[i]
But Jefferson and his Enlightenment-influenced ilk were not able to destroy our birthright and inheritance. Story prevailed. And though things began to shift after the Civil War due to growing influence worldwide of Enlightenment thinking—the idea we can have law and morals without a Divinely created and law-ordered cosmos—our inheritance was still largely intact.
In fact, in 1875, the United States Supreme Court said the common law was the “nomenclature . . . the framers of the Constitution were familiar” with. In 1888, the Court said:
The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.
Even the phrase "law of the land” in the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause saying it is the “supreme law of the land” comes directly from the common law. That Clause is recognition of the fact that our Constitution rests on the common law’s precepts, just as Justice Story said.
Thus, our Constitution can only be rightly interpreted through an application of the common law precepts extant through the adoption of the 14th Amendment.
But in the late 1800s, the atheistic lawyers at Harvard and other elite law schools, along with their priest, Oliver Wendell Holmes, began to influence our Supreme Court. In 1938, the Court, like the corrupt probate judge, stole our birthright!
How the Damnable Holmesians Stole Our Inheritance—Part 1
In 1938, in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, the Supreme Court, quoting Justice Holmes, said the old conception of common law and a divinely law-ordered cosmos had to go. The Court wrote:
There went God and the idea of any law existing independent of what judges and legislators might say. And there went any basis upon which the people in the streets could say the judges and lawyers were wrong.
A Practical Example of Why This Matters
For example, if legislatures, as those who “make” laws, say it is good to let parents consent to the removal of their young daughter’s breast buds so she can “be” a boy, well, that is “the law,” and by what standard can anyone say the legislature is objectively wrong? (Expensive media campaigns are needed to “buy” the Supreme Court justices and legislators we want.)
By next June we will know if the Holmesian arguments our lawyers will soon be making to the Holmesian justices on our Supreme Court will keep them declaring what is a criminal act of mayhem at common law a new constitutional right.
A common law-grounded and interpreted Constitution could never elevate a common law crime to the level of a constitutional right. The argument that physician-assisted mayhem is a constitutional right should be laughed out of court!
How the Damnable Holmesians Stole Our Inheritance—Part 2
That we were cut off from our common law inheritance—that it was stolen from us—was emphasized by these additional words from the Court: [T]he common law . . . exist[s] by the authority of that State without regard to what it may have been in England or anywhere else.” We were wrongly cut off from our history, our family tree, if you will.
Then, to make it clear that God no longer had anything to do with common law or law in general and that civil government alone was now in charge, the justices added, “the authority and only authority is the State.”
Atheism is now the foundation of our law. It’s Holmesian. I hope we have accepted this only because we, like the Randolphs, don’t know that our birthright was stolen.
The Way Forward: Reclaiming Our Inheritance
Of course, as in all ages, the conception of law we call common law was not applied perfectly, but over time Western Civilization went from blood feuds as a means of settling disputes to resolution by due process of law.
However, the arrogant atheists among us, like Holmes, wanted a utopia, and they thought if they could get rid of God, they could create one from scratch, and do so more quickly.
But the conception of common law that Holmes and others despised did not fail us so much as we turned our back on everything we had learned over the centuries about law to start a whole new world drawn from the atheistic principles of the French Revolution.[ii]
It is time for us to jettison our experiment with the atheistic precepts of the French Revolution, and, as in the allegory above, we can reclaim our inheritance by using the legal precedents and the history we’ve either not learned or forgotten. We just need lawyers, especially Christian ones, and citizens who are willing to learn what they were never taught and begin to use it.
If you don’t know what common law is, but you now sense you have been cheated and want your inheritance back, let me know.
The aging probate lawyer in the story—me, as that was my profession before running for the state Senate in 1994—is willing to help those who are willing to learn.
It’s time for the Holmesians among us to go.
The Sad Story of the Once-Prominent and Beloved Randolphs
The Randolphs were a destitute family, living hand-to-mouth on the streets of Nashville. Like others living in the streets, they were under constant threat of danger.
However, their lot was to change after they met an aging former probate lawyer whose prominence in the city had been reduced to that of volunteer at the local soup kitchen by the powerful Holmes family. He took an interest in the Randolphs because he was convinced the couple’s young children were capable of greatness, perhaps even turning around the lives of those living on the city’s streets, if they could just escape their poverty.
Here is what happened and how they were rescued. If need be, skip the next section and pick up with “How the Randolphs Wrongfully Wound Up on the Streets.” Then, I’ll explain their story’s relevance to you.
What the Has-Been Probate Lawyer Learned About the Randolphs
During the lawyer’s interactions with the family, he learned that more than 200 years ago, their ancestors were related to the Calvin family, and they lived on the Calvin’s lavish and sprawling estate. The estate later descended to the Washington family through the marriage of the Calvin’s only child, a daughter, to a Washington.
The estate later descended to the Jeffersons after the Washington’s only daughter, a spinster, died.
The Jeffersons were influential in the community, but they were not cut from the same cloth as the Randolphs and Washingtons. And perhaps that’s why relations between the Randolphs and the Jeffersons began to deteriorate.
Anyway, from there, the estate descended to the Lincoln family, who was related to the Jeffersons, and it had come to rest in the hands of the Holmes family who was related to the Lincolns.
The Holmes clan finally did what the Jeffersons had wanted to do—they kicked the Randolphs off the estate. In time, the Holmes clan, through their wealth, came to control every official in the whole community—think of Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Those officials, by virtue of their allegiance to the Holmes, enjoyed the Holmes’ largess. But their allegiance had resulted in neglect of those they were elected to serve, and the rest of the city’s residents turned against each other trying to survive. That’s where the lawyer found the Calvins.
How the Randolphs Wrongfully Wound Up on the Streets
The lawyer began to do a little digging to see if, perhaps, there had been some mistake in the probate proceedings over the years that had resulted in the Randolphs being kicked off the estate.
To make a long story short, he discovered that the lawyers for the last Lincoln to die had misrepresented the history of the Randolph family’s ancestors to the probate court so as to favor his clients, the Jeffersons, who were more remote ancestors of the Randolphs than the Calvins. Think of a lawyer telling the judge your cousin was the closest living relation who could lawfully inherit from your deceased sibling and hiding the fact of your existence and you get the picture. It didn’t help that the probate judge was part of the Jeffersonian family tree, too.
In sum, the Randolphs got cheated out of their rightful inheritance from the Calvins.
The Happy Ending for the Randolphs and the Perpetual Ignominy of the Holmes Clan
The lawyer took the historical records to the court and, after several years of legal wrangling and appeals, the United States Supreme Court was forced to recognize that the Randolphs were entitled to the estate. They were put in their rightful place.
The Holmes clan, on the other hand, was turned out. As news of the great swindle and the following corruption of the city’s officials spread, the reputation of the Holmes family was not just lost, but became a byword in the community. The family was so despised, the new town officials—the old ones no longer able to buy their elections with Holmes’ money—officially named the city dump “Holmes’ Place,” and the city’s old officials and all judges were scornfully called “Holmesians.”
With the Holmes family displaced, the city was restored to the comparatively peaceful co-existence it had once known.
This story, as you might have guessed, is an allegory. But it is your story and mine when it comes to our Constitution, how its rightful interpretation and authority was “stolen,” and how it can be restored.
How This Allegory Pertains to You
In the story, the Randolphs represent your ancestors and mine, the theological descendants of John Calvin, the Puritans of England. The Calvins, known as Pilgrims, arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
Peyton Randolph, a prominent Randolph family member, was the first president of the Continental Congress that was formed by the colonies in 1774.
The Holmesians are the class of law professors and justices on the United States Supreme Court who now have had a stranglehold on law in our country, and thus, on our country’s direction. The Holmesians represent the final transition from the Calvins to the Randolphs to the (George) Washingtons to the (Abraham) Lincolns.
The Randolphs, Washingtons, and Lincolns lived on a legal “estate” known as common law.
But after the Civil War, the Holmesians, taking their que from the “enlightened” Jeffersonians before them, destroyed that estate through deception, and we Randolphs live with the terrible consequences.
The Inheritance the Crooked Lawyers and Judges Stole
With respect to common law, famed United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, an early force in the development of law in our nation, wrote in 1830:
the common law is our birthright and inheritance and that our ancestors brought hither with them upon their emigration all of it, which was applicable to their situation. The whole Structure of our present jurisprudence stands upon the original foundations of the common law.
His love of and appreciation for common law was opposed by Thomas Jefferson who, following the formation of a united group of states adjectively-called the United States of America, decided he didn’t like common law because it was too Christian in its foundational precepts.[i]
But Jefferson and his Enlightenment-influenced ilk were not able to destroy our birthright and inheritance. Story prevailed. And though things began to shift after the Civil War due to growing influence worldwide of Enlightenment thinking—the idea we can have law and morals without a Divinely created and law-ordered cosmos—our inheritance was still largely intact.
In fact, in 1875, the United States Supreme Court said the common law was the “nomenclature . . . the framers of the Constitution were familiar” with. In 1888, the Court said:
The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.
Even the phrase "law of the land” in the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause saying it is the “supreme law of the land” comes directly from the common law. That Clause is recognition of the fact that our Constitution rests on the common law’s precepts, just as Justice Story said.
Thus, our Constitution can only be rightly interpreted through an application of the common law precepts extant through the adoption of the 14th Amendment.
But in the late 1800s, the atheistic lawyers at Harvard and other elite law schools, along with their priest, Oliver Wendell Holmes, began to influence our Supreme Court. In 1938, the Court, like the corrupt probate judge, stole our birthright!
How the Damnable Holmesians Stole Our Inheritance—Part 1
In 1938, in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, the Supreme Court, quoting Justice Holmes, said the old conception of common law and a divinely law-ordered cosmos had to go. The Court wrote:
The fallacy underlying [common law] . . . is made clear by Mr. Justice Holmes. The doctrine rests upon the assumption that there is "a transcendental body of law outside of any particular State but obligatory within it unless and until changed by statute."
There went God and the idea of any law existing independent of what judges and legislators might say. And there went any basis upon which the people in the streets could say the judges and lawyers were wrong.
A Practical Example of Why This Matters
For example, if legislatures, as those who “make” laws, say it is good to let parents consent to the removal of their young daughter’s breast buds so she can “be” a boy, well, that is “the law,” and by what standard can anyone say the legislature is objectively wrong? (Expensive media campaigns are needed to “buy” the Supreme Court justices and legislators we want.)
By next June we will know if the Holmesian arguments our lawyers will soon be making to the Holmesian justices on our Supreme Court will keep them declaring what is a criminal act of mayhem at common law a new constitutional right.
A common law-grounded and interpreted Constitution could never elevate a common law crime to the level of a constitutional right. The argument that physician-assisted mayhem is a constitutional right should be laughed out of court!
How the Damnable Holmesians Stole Our Inheritance—Part 2
That we were cut off from our common law inheritance—that it was stolen from us—was emphasized by these additional words from the Court: [T]he common law . . . exist[s] by the authority of that State without regard to what it may have been in England or anywhere else.” We were wrongly cut off from our history, our family tree, if you will.
Then, to make it clear that God no longer had anything to do with common law or law in general and that civil government alone was now in charge, the justices added, “the authority and only authority is the State.”
Atheism is now the foundation of our law. It’s Holmesian. I hope we have accepted this only because we, like the Randolphs, don’t know that our birthright was stolen.
The Way Forward: Reclaiming Our Inheritance
Of course, as in all ages, the conception of law we call common law was not applied perfectly, but over time Western Civilization went from blood feuds as a means of settling disputes to resolution by due process of law.
However, the arrogant atheists among us, like Holmes, wanted a utopia, and they thought if they could get rid of God, they could create one from scratch, and do so more quickly.
But the conception of common law that Holmes and others despised did not fail us so much as we turned our back on everything we had learned over the centuries about law to start a whole new world drawn from the atheistic principles of the French Revolution.[ii]
It is time for us to jettison our experiment with the atheistic precepts of the French Revolution, and, as in the allegory above, we can reclaim our inheritance by using the legal precedents and the history we’ve either not learned or forgotten. We just need lawyers, especially Christian ones, and citizens who are willing to learn what they were never taught and begin to use it.
If you don’t know what common law is, but you now sense you have been cheated and want your inheritance back, let me know.
The aging probate lawyer in the story—me, as that was my profession before running for the state Senate in 1994—is willing to help those who are willing to learn.
It’s time for the Holmesians among us to go.
[i] James McClellan, Joseph Story and the American Constitution, 118-19.
[ii] For example, slavery was not lawful at common law. Somerset v. Steuart, Kings Bench (1772) by Lord Mansfield. Note that Somerset was cited as authority by Justice Joseph Story in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41, U.S. 539 in 1842.
