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> Many of the laws that our important to daily life are hundreds of years old. Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly. The incentives of the

> Many of the laws that our important to daily life are hundreds of years old. Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly. The incentives of the modern bureaucratic state mean that any law that is used regularly will eventually be superseded by a more specific law that covers the circumstances more specifically; that’s why there are laws for mail fraud, computer fraud,, wire fraud etc. instead of just prosecuting people for fraud. Any prosecution that relies on using a law that hasn’t been enforced in multiple decades is an obvious instance of prosecutorial discretion, i.e. injustice. It’s like how the FBI works; they may not be able to prove you did what they started investigating you for but if they catch you lying about anything you can be prosecuted for it and it’s really easy to catch someone in a lie if interviews aren’t recorded but reconstructed from the agent’s notes after the fact. Law enforcement can either follow rules and principles or it can be “We’re going to get these bastards.” The latter is corrupt. Laws long unenforced should lapse unless explicitly renewed.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly The third amendment is an important law, but active enforcement is...rare. Even in criminal law, arguably, the ideal is that the existence of the law itself acts as a deterrent—an infrequently enforced law isn't necessarily unimportant, it may just be successful.
- aetherson 8y ago
  You can at least in principle distinguish between "no cases because it is never violated" and "no cases because it is routinely violated but never enforced."
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  The third amendment forbids the US government from doing something it has no desire to do. Professional armies just aren’t quartered in civilian homes anymore. If they did want to do it they’d find some legal justification to do so. Wickard v. Filburn[1] shows that being contrary to a plain reading of the law is no real obstacle to the government trampling roughshod over the US constitution. Active enforcement of important laws may occasionally be rare but if you can’t pass legislation to keep the constitution of your state in effect you probably have an incipient civil war on your hands, or incompetence at a level that makes the Brexit Tories look like Bismarck. The overwhelming majority of important laws are enforced regularly. People don’t have to hunt for laws to get thieves, murderers or slavers[2], they’re enforced multiple times per year. Theft and murder have been illegal as long as there have been states, and slavery has been illegal in the US since, what, 1864? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery_in_the_Un...

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Any law that’s important gets used and enforced regularly The third amendment is an important law, but active enforcement is...rare. Even in criminal law, arguably, the ideal is that the existence of the law itself acts as a deterrent—an infrequently enforced law isn't necessarily unimportant, it may just be successful.

aetherson 8y ago
You can at least in principle distinguish between "no cases because it is never violated" and "no cases because it is routinely violated but never enforced."
barry-cotter 8y ago
The third amendment forbids the US government from doing something it has no desire to do. Professional armies just aren’t quartered in civilian homes anymore. If they did want to do it they’d find some legal justification to do so. Wickard v. Filburn[1] shows that being contrary to a plain reading of the law is no real obstacle to the government trampling roughshod over the US constitution. Active enforcement of important laws may occasionally be rare but if you can’t pass legislation to keep the constitution of your state in effect you probably have an incipient civil war on your hands, or incompetence at a level that makes the Brexit Tories look like Bismarck. The overwhelming majority of important laws are enforced regularly. People don’t have to hunt for laws to get thieves, murderers or slavers[2], they’re enforced multiple times per year. Theft and murder have been illegal as long as there have been states, and slavery has been illegal in the US since, what, 1864? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery_in_the_Un...