Skipping s few logical steps, one reaches the conclusion that the only power of government to license anything is the power of a proprietor to license the use of something it owns. Does the state "own", as sole proprietor, the exclusive right to pursue any occupation, to travel, to carry a firearm, or any of the other things other than use of its land, facilities, equipment, and such? The simple answer is no.
All a state can do, under this line of reasoning, is judicially disable the exercise of a right and deprive one of the exercise of it. It can't forbid the exercise of the right to all persons it does not issue a permit to. This means that if a state wants someone to stop carrying a firearm, or operating a vehicle, or practicing law, they have to petition a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain a court order for disablement and deprivation, after proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the right, if not disabled, would pose an unacceptable risk to the public safety or order, or as the lawful penalty for an offense.
As for documentation, the state could then issue a certificate that, as of the date of the certificate, a records check found no such court-issued disablements, and the citizen, if challenged, could present such certificate, as a way to save the time it might take to do a records search for his current status, assuming the certificate was recent enough to make it unlikely that a disablement had been made subsequent to its issuance. However, since it is a certificate of non-disability and not a license, no person could be required to possess or present one.
This line of argument also pertains to the recent Hiibel case, which, interestingly, has not yet been made a topic of discussion on the conlawprof list. The Supreme Court erred in that case because government has no power to require that a person have a name, and as such, it may not require anyone to present it on demand. By ancient common law, a person may adopt or change his name at any time, so long as it is not done to defraud. A person could proclaim he has all possible names at the same time, instantiated to one or another at each moment in time and in each of an infinite array of parallel timelines.
So if a cop asks you your name, just say "oud-eis," "no man", a pun on the
name Odysseus, given to the cyclops Polyph�mos when he demanded Odysseus' name, and when he later accused Odysseus of putting out his eye, asking for others to avenge him, and gave that as the name of the person who attacked him, the others thought he was denying anyone attacked him: "No man did it to me."
-- Jon
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