Virtual Grub Street: Post-Debate Analysis: False Equivalencies.

One more tactic (at least) that I could not help but notice during my recent debate with the Oxfraudian Legal Team (as it were) was the use of false equivalencies. Equivalencies are a prominent part of their toolkit.

In one case, Mr. Buchan even combined the team’s inexplicable obsession with contract law with such a false equivalency.

So your position is that a contract signed by the parties to it but not actually written by those parties is invalid? Have you ever purchased a home? I have no idea who originally drafted the standard forms for a home purchase but I've signed several, and I assure you that a court would find that I had agreed to the statements made in the document.

What convinced Mr. Buchan that this was “my position” I cannot imagine. The Oxfraudian Prima Facie brief supports at base a libel action. Alternative authorship types are accused of libeling a perfectly certain fact that the Stratford man wrote the plays of Shakespeare. He/they have suffered (im)material losses that they seek to recover.

It might have served Mr. Buchan well that he next moved away from contract law examples if he hadn’t proceeded directly to another variety of false equivalency.

I'm curious how you distinguish the printed signatures by Heminges and Condell dedicating the work to the Herbert brothers from the printed signature by John Lyly to Euphues and His England to the Earl of Oxford. You refer to the book as having been dedicated by Lyly to Oxford in you[r] blog.

Mr. Johnson adds:

You make a very good point...I have to wonder what evidence Gilbert would claim to be admissible in building a prima facie case in support of the attribution of the plays to Oxford.

The respondent(s) (or their representative) are not required to provide a superior prima facie brief for another case (or other cases) selected at the pleasure of the plaintiff in order “earn” the right to point out that the plaintiff’s brief in the case at hand contains inadmissible evidence.

I do not have the responsibility to authenticate every statement I make in accordance with the Federal Rules of Evidence. Only those which I claim to make as part of a Prima Facie brief. To reply to a failure of one’s Prima Facie brief by challenging the respondent(s) to present a better brief on a chosen topic is hardly a tactic permissible within the Rules of Civil Procedure of any court federal or otherwise.

Objection, your honor: Irrelevant.

Setting the legal Rules of Evidence aside, momentarily, it is a matter of course, among scholars, to refer to such letters as being written by the person subscribed so long as no literary and/or textual evidence has been presented to the contrary. Evidence to the contrary would obligate me at least to supply a footnote clarifying the matter.

Any Court requires the same in the body of the description of any piece of evidence. As per Federal Court Rule 26 — Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery — the party offering an item for authentication as evidence must disclose all salient aspects:

(26)(3) Pretrial Disclosures. (A) In General. In addition to the disclosures required by Rule 26(a)(1) and (2), a party must provide to the other parties and promptly file the following information about the evidence that it may present at trial other than solely for impeachment:...

(26) (3)(iii) an identification of each document or other exhibit, including summaries of other evidence...

It may be of interest to know that a correction of item #9 from the Oxfraudian brief, such that it might be admissible as evidence, under the Federal Rules of Evidence et alli, if it would be possible, would need to be of a similar sort. The description of the item would need to make no claims of authorship unless the expert opinions to the contrary were also included.

But now that equivalencies have proven so hopeful to the Oxfraudian cause it’s off to the races. After an unfortunate return to contract law, which I will spare the reader, Mr. Buchan muses:

Here's another hypothetical: William Cecil drafts a death warrant for the Queen of Scots. It's signed by Queen Elizabeth, who gave it to William Davison, who delivered it to the Privy Council, who then carried out the order. Elizabeth claimed she had instructed Davison not to deliver the signed warrant to the council without further orders, and Davison was put in the Tower for over a year as a result.

So the question is, was Mary executed on the authority of Queen Elizabeth who signed the warrant; the Privy Council, who received the signed warrant and carried it out; William Davison who (allegedly) disobeyed Elizabeth's oral instructions not to give the warrant to the PC without further instructions; or the anonymous clerk who actually wrote the manuscript of the warrant?

But wait. There’s more.

In the end we find ourselves back at Mr. Buchan’s insistence that names printed at the ends of letters printed in the front matter of ancient books are the legal equivalent of verified autograph signatures.

I think that, but for Elizabeth's signature, the execution would not have gone forward. Any statements or representations included in the death warrant should be attributed to Elizabeth as signatory, even if they were written by someone else. Pretty clearly nobody was wondering who wrote the language of the death warrant, because its only significance was the signature at the end of the document.

All of these feverish rationalizations in order to have the letters in the First Folio include uncommanded, unprompted, and from their truthful personal knowledge, a statement from H&C themselves that the Stratford man was Shakespeare. If the Rules of evidence legal and/or scholarly must be made a farce in order to get that final result it is, in the Oxfraudian mind, a small price to pay.