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Why the rule of law suffers when we have too many laws

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I have some friends that legally immigrated from Pakistan many years ago. For those who are old enough to remember the Cold War, Pakistan used to be one of our best friends in the region. We talk about politics from time to time and one time he asked me a question, “why does the US allow lawyers to be politicians?” He went on to tell me that Pakistan didn’t allow that. That society works best when people understand the law. Lawyers want people to be ignorant of the law so that they can make money. Words of wisdom.

Lavrenti Beria, the infamous head of the Soviet secret police under Joseph Stalin, supposedly once said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” In the Soviet Union, the regime could always find some crime to pin on anyone it chose to target.

As a general rule, it would be silly to equate the modern United States with a mass-murdering totalitarian state. But in this one respect, the two regimes are more similar than we would like them to be.

Because of the vast scope of current law, in modern America the authorities can pin a crime on the overwhelming majority of people, if they really want to. Whether you get hauled into court or not depends more on the discretionary decisions of law enforcement officials than on any legal rule. And it is difficult or impossible for ordinary people to keep track of all the laws they are subject to and to live a normal life without running afoul of at least some of them. Read more here.