Inconvenience for All: Amen

I was writing a brief email to a friend this morning, when I made a small realization about the nature of our governmental laws. It's nothing profound, but the simplicity in explanation works well to understand the rationale behind our laws. This is by no means saying that laws are being made for the right reasons, but they are being made for some reason and that's important to know.

Essentially, the basis of a law is to protect citizens from harm. A law that is designed in good faith should be able to demonstrate its value through positive effects. If a law, like say, the straw purchase law preventing the purchase of a firearm intended for another, is to be valid. The law should actually have a given, measurable effect. However, there's more than that. The intent behind the law is not to prevent law abiding parents from buying firearms for their law abiding children, but instead to prevent non-felons from purchasing firearms for their felon buddies. If the law is doing what it is intended for, then we should see a measurable impact on the felon population to ease the mind of the law abiding parent who is inconvenienced.

This is the sort of mentality that is so wonderful about science and so woeful about law. There doesn't ever seem to be any follow up on the rationale for law making. I think of the rigor behind scientific study. The proposal, the IRB approval, the advisors' signatures, the oral defense, publishing in a peer reviewed journal, all of these measures are there to give accountability and to ensure careful, repeatable methods. However, with a law. It is certainly a rigorous process to pass laws, but once passed there is no system in place to repeal laws. Somehow nobody seems to value the complete removal of certain outdated, or inneffective laws. It's only amendments and in few very tiresome cases, judicial rulings that strike down a specific law.

In short, the more I learn about law, the more amazed I am at the cumbersome, top heavy system we adhere too. New laws are being passed everyday, and yet there are still some cities with old statutes dictating where a husband should walk in relation to his wife and some states that prohibit atheists from adopting a child. It'd be nice to see another governmental branch, maybe an offshoot of the judicial branch, the House of Repeals. It could be a full time job for an entire bench of justices to just filter through old ledgers all day and file motions to dismiss each and every worthless law. Heck, maybe it would even cause lawmakers to give more serious thought to what is being created if they risk repeal via hard nosed judges whose sole purpose is to ridicule pointless and counterproductive laws. A system of say, accountability? Well you don't say, in any case, inconvenience for all, amen.