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The problem is that our legal code has ballooned, and needlessly so. We tend to react to any bad news with, "Pass a law so it will not happen!" Americans ofte

The problem is that our legal code has ballooned, and needlessly so. We tend to react to any bad news with, "Pass a law so it will not happen!" Americans often do not bother to reflect on whether or not such a law is even compatible with a free society or with our constitution. That is not how things are supposed to work. Sex offender registration and housing restrictions are an excellent example. Megan's Law was passed in response to an exceedingly rare crime, and everything we know about child sex abuse suggests that it is a stupid law (most of the time, it is someone close to the child, not a mysterious stranger). The regulations on where sex offenders are allowed to live have resulted in colonies of homeless sex offenders (which can be a parole violation). These laws are almost all ex post facto laws, but the courts are willing to perform all the mental acrobatics necessary to justify their constitutionality. We wind up with stories about 19 year olds who had sex with 17 year olds winding up on the registry, or even guys who urinated in public. Yet that has been the pattern in American law for my entire life. Someone died because they overdosed on some new drug at a party, and suddenly the drug is illegal. Someone put a high-capacity magazine in a gun and shot dozens of people, and suddenly high-capacity magazines are illegal. Someone bullies a middle schooler on Myspace to the point of suicide, and "online bullying" becomes a crime. The second problem with these sorts of laws is that they never expire. Legislators are never forced to debate old laws, even if the laws no longer make sense. Cocaine was made illegal because members of Congress were told that black men became unstoppable monsters, more accurate with a pistol, and more prone to attack white women -- and in the century that has followed, nobody has bothered to renew that debate and see if that line of reasoning still makes sense. Virginia recently took a rare step and repealed a law that made it illegal for an unmarried heterosexual couple to live together (though plenty of other moronic laws remain on the books there). Maybe it made sense to make it illegal to dig for arrowheads, but without debating it now, how do we know that it still makes sense? We should live in a society where no reasonable person has to worry about whether or not they are breaking the law. That means we need our laws to expire periodically, so that we keep debating whether or not they make sense, and that means we need to not just pass laws every time someone happens that we do not like.

anigbrowl 13y ago
The second problem with these sorts of laws is that they never expire. Legislators are never forced to debate old laws, even if the laws no longer make sense. Not actually true, lots of laws have sunset provisions built in. LAws are often repealed or overturned. New laws are typically passed because egregious situatiosn occur and there's not prosecutable under existing law. In the meantime, defendants rely on procedrualism as much as prosecutors do. The growth and complexity of law is a problem, but misrepresenting the situation as people like Silverglate do (without ever explaining the legal philosophy behind how it came to be this way) leaves everyone worse off because they're just as ignorant as before. The media loves this of course. That's why when government agencies ask for comment ias part of their rulemaking process (which requess for comments are published in the state or federal register, as all pro journalists know), the media hardly ever bothers to mention it ot the public until the deadline for comment sis looming, in order to create a false sense of urgency and an impression ofa government that doesn't give the people time to react to what's being done in their name. We should live in a society where no reasonable person has to worry about whether or not they are breaking the law. That means we need our laws to expire periodically, so that we keep debating whether or not they make sense, and that means we need to not just pass laws every time someone happens that we do not like. Suppose the statute on murder expired automatically every 10 years and had to be reauthorized. What makes you think it would not just be expanded every single time the review period came around? Switching out the legislative mechanism isn't going lead to a magical improvement in human psychology.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  >Suppose the statute on murder expired automatically every 10 years and had to be reauthorized. What makes you think it would not just be expanded every single time the review period came around? It would be. But who would expect it wouldn't be? The law against murder is not the issue here. It's all the laws against all the things no one would necessarily even expect to be illegal. So how about this: A law can be passed with a simple majority but expires after 10 years. A law can be made permanent (in the sense that it doesn't expire, not that it can't be repealed) only if it is passed unanimously in both houses and not passed using a veto override. Obviously then murder can become permanently illegal since that will have 100.00% support. But every decade we have to have a debate about each of the laws that didn't have unanimous support originally, and anything so unimportant that nobody even remembers it can fall off the books before it becomes an anachronism.

anigbrowl 13y ago

The second problem with these sorts of laws is that they never expire. Legislators are never forced to debate old laws, even if the laws no longer make sense. Not actually true, lots of laws have sunset provisions built in. LAws are often repealed or overturned. New laws are typically passed because egregious situatiosn occur and there's not prosecutable under existing law. In the meantime, defendants rely on procedrualism as much as prosecutors do. The growth and complexity of law is a problem, but misrepresenting the situation as people like Silverglate do (without ever explaining the legal philosophy behind how it came to be this way) leaves everyone worse off because they're just as ignorant as before. The media loves this of course. That's why when government agencies ask for comment ias part of their rulemaking process (which requess for comments are published in the state or federal register, as all pro journalists know), the media hardly ever bothers to mention it ot the public until the deadline for comment sis looming, in order to create a false sense of urgency and an impression ofa government that doesn't give the people time to react to what's being done in their name. We should live in a society where no reasonable person has to worry about whether or not they are breaking the law. That means we need our laws to expire periodically, so that we keep debating whether or not they make sense, and that means we need to not just pass laws every time someone happens that we do not like. Suppose the statute on murder expired automatically every 10 years and had to be reauthorized. What makes you think it would not just be expanded every single time the review period came around? Switching out the legislative mechanism isn't going lead to a magical improvement in human psychology.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
>Suppose the statute on murder expired automatically every 10 years and had to be reauthorized. What makes you think it would not just be expanded every single time the review period came around? It would be. But who would expect it wouldn't be? The law against murder is not the issue here. It's all the laws against all the things no one would necessarily even expect to be illegal. So how about this: A law can be passed with a simple majority but expires after 10 years. A law can be made permanent (in the sense that it doesn't expire, not that it can't be repealed) only if it is passed unanimously in both houses and not passed using a veto override. Obviously then murder can become permanently illegal since that will have 100.00% support. But every decade we have to have a debate about each of the laws that didn't have unanimous support originally, and anything so unimportant that nobody even remembers it can fall off the books before it becomes an anachronism.