This is stretching the definition of what "to make legal something" means, because ... [1]
It should be "to make something legal" or it requires "legal tender" to be something lexical and precisely not a sum of its parts, in which case they are not making the thing, they are just giving it a new name, which is not new at all and it is loaded with connotation that invites equating the denotated items to a group.
Thus the problem rests on what legal tender really is. Should it be a sum of parts in origin, states have all the right to interpret what's legal. The way it's written it is nearly useless and there isn't really any precedent either unless to show that the meaning, not the word, has changed.
Blueberries, as are implied by a sibling comment, are not comparable, because, I suppose, they are perrishable. So that's only an argumentum ad absurdum.
Or in other words, you can't make a number illegal.
"Legal tender" is an idiomatic term of art and refers to the category of things which one is obligated to accept in payment of a debt. It is not merely the intersection of "legal" and "tender". The vast majority of goods which are both "legal" and "tender" (i.e. legal to use for payments provided both parties agree to the exchange) are not "legal tender".
To "make" something "legal tender" means to add the thing to the category of "legal tender". In this case, if Arizona were to make Bitcoin legal tender (in Arizona) it would mean that any creditor subject to Arizona's laws who was offered payment of a debt in full in Bitcoin would be obligated to either accept that offer of payment or simply write off the debt. Either way, so far as the state of Arizona and its courts are concerned, the debt would be considered paid.
The problem with this bill is that U.S. states—but not the federal government, unfortunately—are specifically barred from making anything but gold or silver legal tender. This is to prevent a state with a surplus of some good (wheat, for example) from declaring that everyone must now accept that good as payment regardless of any previously agreed terms and, in effect, avoiding paying the full amount that it owes. As the federal government did going off the gold standard and making USD legal tender.
That's just not what the phrase usually means and you (all) are clearly using "make legal" phrasal verb. Ergo you are talking cow pat, because "legal tender" becomes collocated precisely around the time that the constitution was written; meaning, you are overinterpreting your premise.
There may be reasonable precedent by now, I don't doubt it.
See ngram [1] which suffers from scanos and the remaining pieces may be coincidental
As many other commenters have already pointed out to you, that is exactly what the phrase usually means in this context, and more importantly it's exactly what the original phrase "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts" was understood to mean in the U.S. Constitution at the time it was written and ratified. The use of "tender" in this way long predates the writing of the U.S. Constitution, as this example[0] shows:
It was the doctrine of the middle ages that for every commodity or service there was a just money equivalent. This had been the dictum of the Roman law. "However diversified may be the object of an obligation, it is always transferable, in the eyes of the law, into the payment of a certain sum of money." Though the English law of contract was not fully developed before the time of Henry VIII., the action of debt which lay to recover a sum of money was one of the early actions developed, being in use at least as early as the time of Henry I., and it is from the pleas allowed in defense of such action that we have the word "tender." The debtor could of course discharge his obligation by payment of the sum claimed; but sometimes, when there was dissatisfaction on the part of the creditor, he could acquit himself by tender to the creditor of the amount admitted by him as due. Should the creditor refuse the sum tendered, the debtor could then deposit it with the court, leaving with the court the question of the adequacy of the tender. (emphasis added)
That's quite problematic really. The word does certainly not come from the first reich and its Romance roots appear questionable. As etymonline points out, the er-ending should regularly be lost from Anglo-Norman-French. Therefore it seems more likely to me that it is a Nordic influence, as -er is the usual verb ending e.g. in Swedish, jag kommer ham (I come home), and it is still used as a verb at the end of your excerpt, tendered. In addition, to extend ones wishes shows that both words can be understood to mean "to offer", and ex-, es-, s- appears particularly often in French as if reanalyzed after a minor sound change (conversely, t > ts, tsh, ch is much more common), and this is probably still seen in German stunden (to extend a dead-line) if other explanations (i.e. from Stunde "hour", or akin to stun). Before this background it's nigh impossible to guess the origin, if Latin was still prefered and often corrupting native words in writing. In particular, it could be equivalent to "currency" if cognates mean approximately current, on going, cp. German ständig, also the verbal phrase Kosten erstatten. However it's likely more complicated than that, or "immitative" as the OED would say.
So, all things considered, Breckinridge is likely refering to one of those maximally English etymologies.
I reckognize that this has little bearing on an 18th century interpretation if the word was free to be interpeted. It just has nothing to do with literal interpretation, and beyond that I'm not really interested, or not equipped to argue on the basis of case law.
The compound noun "legal tender" is a legal term of art that refers to forms of payment that must be accepted in the settlement of a debt. When we say "the law would make Bitcoin legal tender in Arizona", we mean "the law would require that Bitcoin be accepted for the settlements of debt within Arizona's jurisdiction".
There is no sensible alternate reading nor lexical nor linguistic ambiguity here.
I believe that's precisely what it is because I learned French as well as English and can distinguish adjectives from adverbs without a made uply ending.
A "legal term of art" still only means that it's interpretable, otherwise it would be without any interpretation. Except renegades that are not part of the circle of who's supposed to do the interpretin!
I doubt that the "must accept" is part of the definition, though it's an easier definition and therefore more commonly read than book length treaties. Clearly it's only the state who has to afford acceptable means of exchange, eg. by nurishing an exchange market.
Which is very likely the aim of the bill. Whatever you consider not sensible is without further ado, notwithstanding.
United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.
Law dictionaries are neither binding nor, in many cases, very accurate as I have already indicated. As is language in general, I might add, no problem there.
Could you clarify which definition you're using, in that case, and where you obtained it, and explain why it's a better definition than the US Code?
But a golden Arizona bitcoin would not be foreign
The Constitution gives the Federal government the exclusive right to mint currency. Arizona isn't allowed to do that.
Consider the possibility that if you're not aware of this basic fact, there may be other lackings in your knowledge.
Article I, Section 10, emphasis mine:
"NO STATE SHALL enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; COIN MONEY; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."
I'm looking at this like a coder, not like a vulture, and I might just not be aware of all the #pragmas #ifdefs and #includes
I m not working from any defition but here are some original ones from upto 1500's ME [1] The verb sense "offer" seems particularly relevant, the law grant providing a trade licence as well. The near homophone tinder catches my attention because through the German cognate Zunder I'm reminded of cent (c pronounced as z /ts/ is regular especially in older writing), supposedly a hundredth («The meaning shifted 17c. to "hundredth part" ...», suggested for ¢ in 1786 [2]) which wasn't very relevant to imperial Shilling and Pound. See also "Kirchenzehnt" (tithe, decima pars). It is well comparable to census [3] and accordingly taxation [4] My point being, it's about what the state may require.
The "code" is in effect a random assortment of decisions, it defines extensively, not intensively. The literal interpretation requires an intensive definition.
That said, I did not recognize "COIN MONEY" as verb. Oops. So people have to coin it DIY is what you are saying? :'-)
[4]: past participle of censere "to assess", "... Latin census also was used for "one's wealth, one's worth, wealthiness."» (o.c.) – compare excise (taxes), Spanish tenir "have"; -der is also evident in Portuguese doar "to give, present", where -l- in intervocalic position is usually lost, mind blown.
USD banknotes and coins are also perishable in the sense that they do not last forever. The only difference in that sense between banknotes and blueberries is the magnitude of their lifetime (coins and banknotes last decades, blueberries last weeks). I doubt perishability is the legality of making something legal tender.
Perishibility doesn't matter. The Constitution doesn't say "the government shall not use perishable forms of legal tender". It's not done because it'd be dumb, not because it's forbidden.
Oh, so we are not talking about common sense anymore but about proscriptive law. In other words, there is nothing to understand here.
The constitution says "tender", which might be tenuous to lean on, but you have to admit that "shall not make legal" vs "shall not make" is equivalent to saying "English is the language of this sentence", a classical liar's paradox, because it could mean anything depending which language it's written in, particularly if it's written in legalese.
It says "a Tender in Payment of Debts", which is ... the same thing.
I get that you want to argue that the words are open to interpretation. To the extent that they are, these particular words have been interpreted, they now have definitions which are accepted and considering binding as a matter of legal precedent; legal precedent being the underlying basis of the common law.
It seems pretty clear that you either don't understand that, or that you don't agree with it. Either way, it means that there's very little point in trying to have a discussion about the law with you, because your basis of argumentation is non-legal.
No, you don't get that, obviously, because keep saying words – which need interpretation, whereas the words are at the same time saying that they should not be interpreted, just not by me – to me.
I am basicly saying that the interpretation is unacceptable, and that "they have been interpreted" is not an inherent quality of the word, because, as you have missed or may find irrelevant and impossibly complicated, like the finders of facts might, I'm interested in the historical linguistics of it and the implications for pragmatics and essentially discourse analysis. After all you are clearly saying that the intent matters.
In that sense, fuck you, no offense intended.
The way the law works feels like an insult often enough and the device of punishment is a most obvious outflow of that. It may have its reasons, but those are still quite subjective, wanton, and not at all as objective as you make them out to be.
Comments
This is stretching the definition of what "to make legal something" means, because ... [1]
It should be "to make something legal" or it requires "legal tender" to be something lexical and precisely not a sum of its parts, in which case they are not making the thing, they are just giving it a new name, which is not new at all and it is loaded with connotation that invites equating the denotated items to a group.
Thus the problem rests on what legal tender really is. Should it be a sum of parts in origin, states have all the right to interpret what's legal. The way it's written it is nearly useless and there isn't really any precedent either unless to show that the meaning, not the word, has changed.
Blueberries, as are implied by a sibling comment, are not comparable, because, I suppose, they are perrishable. So that's only an argumentum ad absurdum.
Or in other words, you can't make a number illegal.
[1] one could quibble about flat adverbs
"Legal tender" is an idiomatic term of art and refers to the category of things which one is obligated to accept in payment of a debt. It is not merely the intersection of "legal" and "tender". The vast majority of goods which are both "legal" and "tender" (i.e. legal to use for payments provided both parties agree to the exchange) are not "legal tender".
To "make" something "legal tender" means to add the thing to the category of "legal tender". In this case, if Arizona were to make Bitcoin legal tender (in Arizona) it would mean that any creditor subject to Arizona's laws who was offered payment of a debt in full in Bitcoin would be obligated to either accept that offer of payment or simply write off the debt. Either way, so far as the state of Arizona and its courts are concerned, the debt would be considered paid.
The problem with this bill is that U.S. states—but not the federal government, unfortunately—are specifically barred from making anything but gold or silver legal tender. This is to prevent a state with a surplus of some good (wheat, for example) from declaring that everyone must now accept that good as payment regardless of any previously agreed terms and, in effect, avoiding paying the full amount that it owes. As the federal government did going off the gold standard and making USD legal tender.
That's just not what the phrase usually means and you (all) are clearly using "make legal" phrasal verb. Ergo you are talking cow pat, because "legal tender" becomes collocated precisely around the time that the constitution was written; meaning, you are overinterpreting your premise.
There may be reasonable precedent by now, I don't doubt it.
See ngram [1] which suffers from scanos and the remaining pieces may be coincidental
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=legal+tender&y...
As many other commenters have already pointed out to you, that is exactly what the phrase usually means in this context, and more importantly it's exactly what the original phrase "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts" was understood to mean in the U.S. Constitution at the time it was written and ratified. The use of "tender" in this way long predates the writing of the U.S. Constitution, as this example[0] shows:
[0] Breckinridge, S P. "Legal tender, a study in English and American monetary history". 1903. Page 22. <https://archive.org/download/legaltenderstudy00brecuoft/lega...>
That's quite problematic really. The word does certainly not come from the first reich and its Romance roots appear questionable. As etymonline points out, the er-ending should regularly be lost from Anglo-Norman-French. Therefore it seems more likely to me that it is a Nordic influence, as -er is the usual verb ending e.g. in Swedish, jag kommer ham (I come home), and it is still used as a verb at the end of your excerpt, tendered. In addition, to extend ones wishes shows that both words can be understood to mean "to offer", and ex-, es-, s- appears particularly often in French as if reanalyzed after a minor sound change (conversely, t > ts, tsh, ch is much more common), and this is probably still seen in German stunden (to extend a dead-line) if other explanations (i.e. from Stunde "hour", or akin to stun). Before this background it's nigh impossible to guess the origin, if Latin was still prefered and often corrupting native words in writing. In particular, it could be equivalent to "currency" if cognates mean approximately current, on going, cp. German ständig, also the verbal phrase Kosten erstatten. However it's likely more complicated than that, or "immitative" as the OED would say.
So, all things considered, Breckinridge is likely refering to one of those maximally English etymologies.
I reckognize that this has little bearing on an 18th century interpretation if the word was free to be interpeted. It just has nothing to do with literal interpretation, and beyond that I'm not really interested, or not equipped to argue on the basis of case law.
No-one is talking "making legal [something]".
The compound noun "legal tender" is a legal term of art that refers to forms of payment that must be accepted in the settlement of a debt. When we say "the law would make Bitcoin legal tender in Arizona", we mean "the law would require that Bitcoin be accepted for the settlements of debt within Arizona's jurisdiction".
There is no sensible alternate reading nor lexical nor linguistic ambiguity here.
I believe that's precisely what it is because I learned French as well as English and can distinguish adjectives from adverbs without a made uply ending.
A "legal term of art" still only means that it's interpretable, otherwise it would be without any interpretation. Except renegades that are not part of the circle of who's supposed to do the interpretin!
I doubt that the "must accept" is part of the definition, though it's an easier definition and therefore more commonly read than book length treaties. Clearly it's only the state who has to afford acceptable means of exchange, eg. by nurishing an exchange market.
Which is very likely the aim of the bill. Whatever you consider not sensible is without further ado, notwithstanding.
"I doubt that the 'must accept' is part of the definition"
You can doubt it all you like.
https://thelawdictionary.org/legal-tender/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5103
Law dictionaries are neither binding nor, in many cases, very accurate as I have already indicated. As is language in general, I might add, no problem there.
But a golden Arizona bitcoin would not be foreign
Could you clarify which definition you're using, in that case, and where you obtained it, and explain why it's a better definition than the US Code?
The Constitution gives the Federal government the exclusive right to mint currency. Arizona isn't allowed to do that.
Consider the possibility that if you're not aware of this basic fact, there may be other lackings in your knowledge.
Article I, Section 10, emphasis mine:
"NO STATE SHALL enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; COIN MONEY; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."
The quoted part in question is a dispositive right. It does not give anyone the right to do anything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30119822
I'm looking at this like a coder, not like a vulture, and I might just not be aware of all the #pragmas #ifdefs and #includes
I m not working from any defition but here are some original ones from upto 1500's ME [1] The verb sense "offer" seems particularly relevant, the law grant providing a trade licence as well. The near homophone tinder catches my attention because through the German cognate Zunder I'm reminded of cent (c pronounced as z /ts/ is regular especially in older writing), supposedly a hundredth («The meaning shifted 17c. to "hundredth part" ...», suggested for ¢ in 1786 [2]) which wasn't very relevant to imperial Shilling and Pound. See also "Kirchenzehnt" (tithe, decima pars). It is well comparable to census [3] and accordingly taxation [4] My point being, it's about what the state may require.
The "code" is in effect a random assortment of decisions, it defines extensively, not intensively. The literal interpretation requires an intensive definition.
That said, I did not recognize "COIN MONEY" as verb. Oops. So people have to coin it DIY is what you are saying? :'-)
[1]: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti...
[2]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/cent
[3]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/census#etymonline_v_8349
[4]: past participle of censere "to assess", "... Latin census also was used for "one's wealth, one's worth, wealthiness."» (o.c.) – compare excise (taxes), Spanish tenir "have"; -der is also evident in Portuguese doar "to give, present", where -l- in intervocalic position is usually lost, mind blown.
USD banknotes and coins are also perishable in the sense that they do not last forever. The only difference in that sense between banknotes and blueberries is the magnitude of their lifetime (coins and banknotes last decades, blueberries last weeks). I doubt perishability is the legality of making something legal tender.
It's understood that nothing lasts forever, but bank notes are not perrishable in the sense that blueberries are unless taken out of circulation.
The slippery sloap that you want to go down is trivially infelicit
Perishibility doesn't matter. The Constitution doesn't say "the government shall not use perishable forms of legal tender". It's not done because it'd be dumb, not because it's forbidden.
Oh, so we are not talking about common sense anymore but about proscriptive law. In other words, there is nothing to understand here.
The constitution says "tender", which might be tenuous to lean on, but you have to admit that "shall not make legal" vs "shall not make" is equivalent to saying "English is the language of this sentence", a classical liar's paradox, because it could mean anything depending which language it's written in, particularly if it's written in legalese.
It does in fact not say "legal tender".
It says "a Tender in Payment of Debts", which is ... the same thing.
I get that you want to argue that the words are open to interpretation. To the extent that they are, these particular words have been interpreted, they now have definitions which are accepted and considering binding as a matter of legal precedent; legal precedent being the underlying basis of the common law.
It seems pretty clear that you either don't understand that, or that you don't agree with it. Either way, it means that there's very little point in trying to have a discussion about the law with you, because your basis of argumentation is non-legal.
No, you don't get that, obviously, because keep saying words – which need interpretation, whereas the words are at the same time saying that they should not be interpreted, just not by me – to me.
I am basicly saying that the interpretation is unacceptable, and that "they have been interpreted" is not an inherent quality of the word, because, as you have missed or may find irrelevant and impossibly complicated, like the finders of facts might, I'm interested in the historical linguistics of it and the implications for pragmatics and essentially discourse analysis. After all you are clearly saying that the intent matters.
In that sense, fuck you, no offense intended.
The way the law works feels like an insult often enough and the device of punishment is a most obvious outflow of that. It may have its reasons, but those are still quite subjective, wanton, and not at all as objective as you make them out to be.