Posted on 04/09/2015 7:52:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
What began as a trickle has become a stream that could become a cleansing torrent. Criticisms of the overcriminalization of American life might catalyze an appreciation of the toll the administrative state is taking on the criminal-justice system, and liberty generally.
In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors. One would name a famous person — “say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon” — and other prosecutors would try to imagine “a plausible crime for which to indict him or her,” usually a felony plucked from “the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield.” Did the person make “false pretenses on the high seas”? Is he guilty of “injuring a mailbag”?
In 2009, Harvey Silverglate’s book Three Felonies a Day demonstrated how almost any American could be unwittingly guilty of various crimes between breakfast and bedtime. Silverglate, a defense lawyer and civil libertarian, demonstrated the dangers posed by the intersection of prosecutorial ingenuity with the expansion of the regulatory state.
In 2013, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor and creator of Instapundit, published in The Columbia Law Review “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime.” Given the axiom that a competent prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and given the proliferation of criminal statutes and regulations backed by criminal penalties, what becomes of the mens rea principle that people deserve criminal punishment only if they engage in conduct that is inherently wrong or that they know to be illegal?
Now comes “Rethinking Presumed Knowledge of the Law in the Regulatory Age” (Tennessee Law Review) by Michael Cottone, a federal judicial clerk.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
RE: don’t commit crimes. Problem solved.
How do you NOT do that when there are thousands of laws in the books that make many little things you do like failing to immediately sweep off the sesame seeds from the floor in a bagel, ILLEGAL?
Not an accident. The private prisons lobby for new law to put people in prison so they make money.
You have a point, but it is not relevant to the topic at hand.
” When you have full-time legislatures that are essentially “law factories,” what else should we expect?”
Exactly! People often complain that our legislators don’t work very hard. As far as I’m concerned they work way too hard.
I remember attending traffic school a while back and the teacher holding up a thick book called “Traffic Code”. He said, with this the cop can stop you pretty much any time he wants to, because chances are you’re probably unknownigly breaking one of these rules.
Just getting out of the parking lot today you’ll likely break two or three.
I suddenly came to the conclusion that we have waaayy too many laws.
What about the article do you disagree with? He’s saying we got too many laws - including the ones you’re complaining about.
Mandatory removal of door locks on all homes to ensue listen to your government or else.
No, but criminals need to do LESS of crimes.
1. Go down to your local drugstore.
2. Buy one of those daily pill organizers.
3. Fill it with daily medications.
Boom! You're a felon
In my opinion, legislatures should hardly get ANYTHING passed, because of gridlock.
They shouldn’t sit around and think, “hey, this would be a good idea.” There has to be a damn good reason to pass ANY law. And many should be repealed.
I don’t think that most of these posters actually read the article. It’s talking about things like driving a snowmobile onto protected lands. They’re talking about deliberate criminals.
Get this: A new law was just passed in Dallas - in a certain section of Dallas - that required that you back into your parking space.
Insane. These people have nothing better to do with their time?
Then all is right with the Free Republic world.
What? I put my pills is two keepers each week.
Get used to back-in parking. New vehicles have less and less rear visibility as time goes on. So much so that rear view cameras are going to be mandatory in a year or two.
We don't have the same opportunities as white folk, yada yada yada.........
My proposal is as follows:
1. Legislature to meet only two months each year
2. Require 2/3 vote to pass new laws
3. All existing laws to be sunsetted and reconsidered under the 2/3 rule
4. All regulations must be approved by Congress by 2/3 vote
The moral basis for this proposal is:
1. Freedom is our most precious value
2. Every law is essentially a restriction on our personal freedom
3. However, to coexist peacefully in a society a certain amount of rules are necessary
4. There has to be general (more than simple majority) agreement to implement those rules, hence the 2/3 threshold.
Seek was just venting.
Whoever runs on an intellegent repeal of Federal and State laws will be popular. Our criminal law looks like our tax code.
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