On laws and government

[unixronin]

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow."

— James Madison (likely), Federalist No. 62, 1788

There is a long-standing legal principle in the US and the UK that ignorance of the law is no defense against the law.  You cannot be excused for violating a law merely because you didn't know of its existence or provisions.  But can that principle stand any longer when the body of laws and regulations with the force of law has grown so voluminous, so complex, and so internally inconsistent that no-one, not even lawyers and judiciaries who have spent their entire lives studying it, are or can be familiar with all of it?  This question becomes doubly true when the government shows itself willing to knowingly entrap otherwise law-abiding citizens into technical violations of laws they may not even know the existence of.

The United States is founded upon the principle that its people are free, and that government exists to serve the people.  Encircling and binding them up with laws in such vast numbers that no-one can keep track of them does not seem to further that end, especially when so many of those laws — as we have clearly seen recently in the domino collapse of the financial sector — do not accomplish their ostensible purpose of protecting the public good.  Those banking institutions were all ostensibly regulated, for our protection; but the regulation was worthless, because in practice the regulators worked for the benefit of the financial institutions they were supposed to be regulating, not for the public good.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

If everyone is guilty of something, the boss has them by the short hairs. When and as needed.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I would be more comfortable with this state of being if they couldn't just let each other off the hook for this stuff they saddle us with.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

A significant factor in the financial sector mess is that existing regulation was not being enforced. The weight of the regulations was finally so onerous that the system could not function well with all the overhead. Rather than fix the regulatory burden, the oversight responsibility was simply abandoned.

Regulations are critical to maintain free markets. Otherwise, existing entities will erect rents to prohibit any new entries. (See Micro$oft and IP activity.)

{sarcasm}
Without all those laws, how will I be able to control what my neighbors are allowed to do?
{/sarcasm}

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There's also a problem in that the SEC was apparently playing along with whatever Wall Street wanted. There was a quid pro quo — grease the wheels, and we'll give you a high-paying job later. wcg pointed me at a couple of good NYT articles by Michael Lewis in this post (http://wcg.livejournal.com/548709.html), but now I can't get back to them to link or cite.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Understood. Once there was an attitude that some of the regulations could be ignored, the opportunity to be selective about enforcement, for favor, was obvious.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I send this on to a couple of lawyers and jurists I know?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

By all means. Give me time to get my asbestos underwear on first, though. :)

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Oh, they won't be getting in touch with you. They're kind of ... prohibited by federal law from responding to such things.

But if they don't at least read them, then I get to give them all kinds of hell about it at the next family get together. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, they won't be getting in touch with you. They're kind of ... prohibited by federal law from responding to such things

Now you've really got me curious.....