4 ms·

Some people, when they find legislation hard to understand, think "I know, let's legislate to make legislation easier to understand." Now they have two problems

by voyou 14y ago

Some people, when they find legislation hard to understand, think "I know, let's legislate to make legislation easier to understand." Now they have two problems.

Al-Khwarizmi 14y ago
I think you might not have read the article, because the proposal is rather simple and reasonable. Laws are often written with links to other laws that are required to understand them. Some laws are even "diffs" of other laws: "Paragraph 5 in law 65/1996 is removed, and the following paragraph is added instead: blah blah".* This means that you often need to open four or five different documents to understand a single law. The proposal seems aimed at doing away with the links and the diffs, which sounds very reasonable. *Note: the example is based on my country's laws (I'm not from the US so I don't read US laws), but judging from the content of the article, it seems like US laws have the same problem.
- gamblor956 14y ago
  In the US, the current published version of a law reflects all legislative amendments to it. The problem is finding historical versions of the law, which usually requires historical lawbooks or access to expensive legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis which maintain historical versions of state and federal laws.
  - gizmo686 14y ago
    The problem that this bill is trying to solve is in reading proposed amendments. Once an amendment passes, then we can simply look at the running copy of the main law. But, if you are trying to decide if we should pass an amendment, you (under the current system) must cross reference to every law mentioned in order to simply understand what the bill you are considering does.
- cpleppert 14y ago
  From the article: ‘‘No Act shall be revised or amended by mere reference to it. Every bill or joint resolution which amends an existing section, subsection, or other subdivision of any Act shall set forth the section, subsection, or other subdivision sufficiently to enable the intent and effect of the bill or joint resolution to be clearly understood," the two-page bill states. First of all, any bill that can't be understood will be struck down by the courts immediately. The "clearly understood" provision violates the principle that legislation will be precise. If the legislation lays out a supplementary principle that serves to explain it then it can't be enforced in court so it absolutely meaningless. Congress already lays out why it passes bills in introductions. This is a political stunt and nothing more. Law is by its very nature hard to understand especially in a common law system like ours based on precedents. There is no easy way to allow citizens to understand the law. It would be great if you could go online and clearly see 1)what the law is and sections have changed over time 2) which law led to which changes in the published statute and see how that law changed other sections I'm working on something like that right now. Please keep in mind that making the law more accessible doesn't make it easier to understand. There are so many terms embedded in the law and the courts may not have a clear interpretation of the language yet; or different circuits have different precedents.
  - rtpg 14y ago
    Quoting a bigger part of the changed text will not make the law meaningless. Saying "we replace '5kg of solid gold' with '3kg of solid gold'" Instead of "we replace 5 with 3 here" makes it clearer.

by voyou 14y ago

Some people, when they find legislation hard to understand, think "I know, let's legislate to make legislation easier to understand." Now they have two problems.

Al-Khwarizmi 14y ago

I think you might not have read the article, because the proposal is rather simple and reasonable. Laws are often written with links to other laws that are required to understand them. Some laws are even "diffs" of other laws: "Paragraph 5 in law 65/1996 is removed, and the following paragraph is added instead: blah blah".* This means that you often need to open four or five different documents to understand a single law. The proposal seems aimed at doing away with the links and the diffs, which sounds very reasonable. *Note: the example is based on my country's laws (I'm not from the US so I don't read US laws), but judging from the content of the article, it seems like US laws have the same problem.

gamblor956 14y ago
In the US, the current published version of a law reflects all legislative amendments to it. The problem is finding historical versions of the law, which usually requires historical lawbooks or access to expensive legal databases like Westlaw or Lexis which maintain historical versions of state and federal laws.
- gizmo686 14y ago
  The problem that this bill is trying to solve is in reading proposed amendments. Once an amendment passes, then we can simply look at the running copy of the main law. But, if you are trying to decide if we should pass an amendment, you (under the current system) must cross reference to every law mentioned in order to simply understand what the bill you are considering does.
cpleppert 14y ago
From the article: ‘‘No Act shall be revised or amended by mere reference to it. Every bill or joint resolution which amends an existing section, subsection, or other subdivision of any Act shall set forth the section, subsection, or other subdivision sufficiently to enable the intent and effect of the bill or joint resolution to be clearly understood," the two-page bill states. First of all, any bill that can't be understood will be struck down by the courts immediately. The "clearly understood" provision violates the principle that legislation will be precise. If the legislation lays out a supplementary principle that serves to explain it then it can't be enforced in court so it absolutely meaningless. Congress already lays out why it passes bills in introductions. This is a political stunt and nothing more. Law is by its very nature hard to understand especially in a common law system like ours based on precedents. There is no easy way to allow citizens to understand the law. It would be great if you could go online and clearly see 1)what the law is and sections have changed over time 2) which law led to which changes in the published statute and see how that law changed other sections I'm working on something like that right now. Please keep in mind that making the law more accessible doesn't make it easier to understand. There are so many terms embedded in the law and the courts may not have a clear interpretation of the language yet; or different circuits have different precedents.
- rtpg 14y ago
  Quoting a bigger part of the changed text will not make the law meaningless. Saying "we replace '5kg of solid gold' with '3kg of solid gold'" Instead of "we replace 5 with 3 here" makes it clearer.