This is the land of the free – as long as you follow the
laws, rules, and regulations of your local authority, county authority, state,
and federal government. Of course, if you leave the country, or deal with
foreign countries, you have more laws and regulations. Even if you take a boat
off shore, you still have to deal with Maritime law.
You are quite likely breaking several laws or regulations at
this very moment – and you don’t even know it.
I spent some time at the computer trying to figure out just
how many laws pertain to my particular life. It’s an impossible task. Believe
me, there are thousands, possibly millions of laws pertaining to virtually
every aspect of your life. And for any holes those codified laws might not
cover, there is this nebulous thing called common law.
If you are doing something right now, or even if you are
doing nothing, there are laws that govern that.
When I was younger, I worked as a police officer in a small
community. One of the first things I learned was the power of selective enforcement.
It’s a term that cover’s an officer’s rear when some laws are not enforced. (“I
choose not to arrest that jay-walker because I’m busy with a bank robbery right
now.”) The truth is, there are just too many laws to enforce every one of them
uniformly all the time.
That doesn’t seem to deter lawmakers, though. Every year
they crank out ever more laws – even knowing that many will never be enforced.
At what point are there enough laws on the books? When are
there so many laws that one more can’t be written?
I think I found the key to this problem. As long as we have
lawyers, there will be lawmakers. As long as lawmakers turn out laws there will
be lawyers. Guess who the vast majority of lawmakers are – you guessed it,
lawyers. It is a self-serving vicious circle. And one for which we pay dearly.
It’s called the Justice System, but where is the justice in
being arrested for breaking a law you don’t even know about? And we are told
ignorance of the law is no defense. True, many of the basic laws are simply
common sense for any moral person – don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t
assault others – just common sense. But even within these core values, there
are so many definitions attempting to cover every detail that one could easily
break the law without ever realizing it.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and venture a guess that
not one person knows every manmade law that governs our lives. Oh, they are
codified somewhere, and I am certain someone could find a law, rule, or
regulation to cover virtually any circumstance. I just don’t understand how a
nation that prizes freedom as much as we do can have so many laws, rules, and
regulations.
Yet, we have full-time governmental bodies that continually
turn out more laws, rules, and regulations in volume every year. When do we say
enough? When
do we tell lawmakers to clean up the legal code? Get rid of old laws that no
longer fit in today’s environment. When do we say that if a law isn’t taught
and clearly published to the citizenry, it is not a valid law?
C’mon people, after 238 years of constant lawmaking,
shouldn’t there be enough laws already? Do we really need more?
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