Legislative Audit: any merit?

[osan]

I don't know if this is a new idea, but it occurred to me this morning that because we live in a morass of statutory dangers - obscure and arcane laws that often conflict with others - that any state truly interested in protecting the rights and freedoms of its people need to render state governance wholly benign to non-criminals. This, of course, is as far from the positive truth as one might imagine.

Forget for the moment the federal laws. Straightening those out will prove a generational affair in the best case, methinks. Just consider doing this on a state level. Think of ding-holes like NJ, NY, and even TX where great multiplicities of dangerously stupid, out of date, and unreasonable statutes abound, serving no other practical purpose than to provide the instruments of enforcement with the broadest and most manifold pretexts for affecting arrests and bringing charges against the presumably good people the respective states.

I believe it is of strategic importance to get on the public record the explicit and clearly stated purpose of a given state's "government". Why is it there? What is its raison-d'être? Here I speak of very carefully maneuvering the "state" into a corner. Make a BIG stink about it - by what practical means I am not sure as I have no practical experience in such matters. Perhaps bringing suits against the state wherein the right officials would be called to testify in open court along very carefully engineered lines.

The point here would be to force the state into giving to its people an official and irrevocable position on the question of why they are there and what their purpose is, philosophically speaking. It does not matter what they ultimately put forward in the broadest philosophical terms, so long as it is stated in a way that pins them solidly to the floor. In those broadest terms there are really only two things in which we are interested in hearing. Preferably, that they exist to protect and guarantee the fundamental rights of all its residents. Less preferably, but equally usefully that they are there for their own sake and what the rest of us want matters all of nothing. Either way, they have committed themselves to a fundamentally irrevocable position, which is good for us, though better in the former case vis-à-vis the latter.

Forgetting the latter case for the purposes of this thread, for it involves a far more stark and potentially lethal set of responses than does the former, let us assume that we can wrangle for the state an official, in-writing, "enacted" position that says the sole or at least primary purpose of the state and all its governing entities thereunder is the guaranty and protection of the fundamental rights of its people. At that point, I do believe that an exhaustively detailed audit of that state's body of statutory law (and possibly even its common law case-body) could be carried forth such that the "state" would find itself in a possibly untenable position to ignore the findings, particularly if said audit were conducted by legal "scholars" at the highest management levels.

We might want to see the state legislatures undertake such analysis, but I strongly question the wisdom in that, given the vested interests that would grossly conflict with those of "the people".

Imagine "crowd sourcing" such an effort with analyses filtering upward through levels of credible competency. Basically, the lowly but interested citizen might analyze a given statute for propriety, constitutionality, its underlying principles and assumptions, and so forth. They would then recommend it remain or be stricken from the books. This would be handed off to a proofer who would critique the analysis - a form of peer-review. I would then hand it "upward" at least one level, if not two, for iterative analysis and critique. If by the foruth-level the original analysis still stands, we might then call it sound and forward a recommendation to the legislature for dispositive action, all the while keeping them painfully aware of the microscope under which they abide.

We could start by contriving basic classes of statutes and prioritizing them as to which would be first for redress. Then further subcategorize for however many levels make sense. Then within each subcategory, we ID and populate the candidates and prioritize them. I might suggest we start with the easier and work our way up the chain of difficulty. For example, blue laws that remain on the books should in theory get passed out of effect pretty easily, the legislators perhaps then trained to a procedure of OUR design. This trains them to be good little doggie-servants and should meet with little resistance.

For example, there remains on the books in WV a law that allows me to beat my wife on a Sunday, so long as I do so on the steps of the Capitol. I $#@! you not. It is here and it is real. Nobody does it and I believe I speak for the great majority of Americans when I say that such a law has no place on the books. It simply provides avenues for bad behavior and clogs things up like seaweed in the sea-chest of a ship. It's gross and serves no useful purpose.

Starting with the "easy", seemingly insignificant statutes gets the ball rolling. Then progress up the chain by some means and maps yet to be determined until we start getting to the real meat - those laws that do not pass rational muster and which violate the fundamental rights of the people. Once we had the official explanation in hand, the raison-d'être that says government's sole or primary purpose is the protection of human rights; once we have our dogs in the legislature trained to the basic process and thereby in open acknowledgement and acceptance of their fiduciary responsibilities to the rights of the people, how will they be able to credibly resist the forces compelling them to repeal the various "serious" laws (such as firearms restrictions, which most often carry draconian penalties) that violate the rights they are admittedly sworn to protect?

The keys here are to paint these snakes into a corner from which they cannot slither, and to get as many people involved as possible. What power there could be if even only 1000 people in a state such as NJ were to devote themselves to this cause - to be willing to be trained in the fundamental principles of proper human relations and to cut their analytic teeth on relatively simple matters, advancing up the ladder so to speak as they gain experience in how to slice and dice laws such that they can separate the valid from the rest.

Does this sound like a waste of time, or does it have merit? I confess my inability to tell for certain on this one, though it seems a good idea. Crowd-sourcing the repeal of the endless reams of invalid and openly criminal laws that trample upon our sovereign rights. I daresay that with the right people on this that at the very least the invalid nature of the vast majority of "law" would be exposed for the dangerous and onerous sham that it is.

I think the time of waiting upon our elected officials to do what needs doing is long past. They are either too inept or too unwilling to do the right things for their masters. As the old saying goes, if you want something done right, you must do it yourself.

Opinions?

[Bryan]

Bump.