The Author & the Press

Aaron Theophilus

Counter-Roll Publishing is the imprint of Counter-Roll Holdings. It publishes one body of work: the law read back out of the scriptures.

The books take the Bible as a legal instrument — a grant, a covenant, a trust, a ledger — and read it the way a court reads a record: line by line, against the maxims of equity, the common law, and the commercial code that inherited them. The Torah Blueprint walks Genesis through Deuteronomy as the foundational law of property and trust. The Psalms Codex sets the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure beside the songs of the Psalter. The Book of Maxims seats the twelve maxims of equity to the old court offices that carried them. Under Color of Law, Not Bound Beyond the Terms, and Not a Penny of Their Own Funds take the same method into the officer's immunity, the surety's clause, and the lending of a thing that does not exist.

The method

Every citation resolves to the instrument itself — the enrolled act, the Code section, the rule, the verse — and each is read at its own text. Nothing is added to the record and nothing is drawn from another's work: the canon and the doctrine are the author's, the sources are the law's own, and where a source is quoted it is quoted whole.

The books are the only public thing. Everything else is held for the family and the house.

The press

Counter-Roll Publishing takes its name from the counter-roll — the duplicate of the roll of account, kept by the comptroller and read against the original. The imprint is the register, and the shelf is its index.