RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Old laws

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Justin--

I understand your point, but my idea was that we are dealing in this case
with a situation where the state made a law and could have repealed it.
Instead of repealing the law, they broke it and are now they plan to
penalize themselves.  I agree that the age of the law isn't really the
important thing, but isn't it an awfully strange situation?  If they had
been aware of the law, they would have changed it.  To make your example
of kidnapping more appropriate, imagine that the kidnapper had written the
law against kidnapping and he had the power to change the law to legalize
kidnapping at any time.  Strangely, he did not legalize kidnapping, he
kidnapped someone anyway and now he was planning to sentence himself to a
prison term for breaking his own law against kidnapping.  Now doesn't it
sound ridiculous?

Even stranger, students agreed to pay tuition (or 'fees', if you prefer)
and they did not know about the law and they did not challenge the tuition
requirement.  It is as if (in addition to the weirdness just described)
the person being kidnapped had said "yes, please kidnap me, I'd like to be
kidnapped."  Sure, students would like to pay less tuition, but you might
remember that just a few years ago U Missouri was considered the #1 best
value in education in the US News and World Report because tuition was so
low!!  It was a very good deal and students who were unhappy should not
have been unhappy.

Another layer of absurdity is that I'm hearing that it is possible the
state will want to reimburse people for their tuition payments.  That is
incredibly foolish.  So the state broke it's own law, what of it?  Where
does it say what the penalty should be?  They can send a letter of apology
to the students who were charged illegal tuition, but I think they
shouldn't waste that much time and effort.  They should say "oops," repeal
the old law, and get on with their lives.  If any student complained that
the fees were illegal in advance of paying the fees, perhaps they owe that
student a reimbursement.  Does even one such student exist?

Suppose that you were to learn tomorrow that there is a law on the books
in Missouri that says "No man shall be paid more than $0.50 per hour for
any work he has done to aid the communication of electronic computers.
Any man who accepts a higher rate of pay for such work is in violation of
this statute."  The courts would have to decide if your job was paying an
illegal salary.  Suppose that they determined that you had been paid too
much for the past several years.  Should you have to give back the amount
of your pay that exceeded the legal limit?  I certainly hope so.  A law is
a law, right?

In Massachusetts, where I grew up, there were many famous laws on the
books that were never enforced, or so I was told.  For example, supposedly
it was illegal to dance on Sundays.  I think the laws stayed on the books
because it would be work to change the law and nobody wanted to work on
something that silly and unimportant.  The situation is different with the
law against tuition in Missouri, but I think the law is silly and should
be laughed at.

Mike


On Fri, 27 Dec 2002, McNutt, Justin M. wrote:

> > I would have been fine with it if the law was evoked within the first
> > year or two after they started to charge tuition.  Then I wouldn't
> > care how old the law was.  The thing that strikes me as preposterous
> > is that the law was ignored for *many* decades.  There ought to be
> > some way for states to protect themselves against this kind of
> > mistake!
> >
> > This is so crazy that I'm really surprised I haven't seen it in the
> > national news.
>
> This is an old thread, but there's something in it that drives me crazy,
> so I'm responding.
>
> The idea that a rule, law, or decision must be used soon (i.e. before
> people forget about it) is silly.  It equates, essentially, to the idea
> that ignorance of the law is a defense.  Just because you forgot about a
> law doesn't make it any less valid.  To say otherwise would set an
> *extremely* dangerous legal precedent.  Just because no one has been
> kidnapped in the last five years doesn't mean that the law that makes it
> illegal and sets the penalties should all of a sudden become invalid
> because "that law was written decades ago and hasn't been used for
> years."
>
> This idea that anything that isn't part of the current public
> consciousness is invalid is a common LANMAN weapon against IATS, and
> it's crap.  Just because you don't remember it or didn't READ the policy
> doesn't make the policy, law, rule, whatever invalid.
>
> --J
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