RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Old laws

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

> > The problem with what you say is that the state gets to decide when it
> > follows it's own laws after-the-fact and when to apply those laws to
> > others after-the-fact.
>
> After what fact?  After the law has been broken?  It seems to me that the
> important thing is the penalty for violating the law.  That is nearly
> always determined after the fact and based on the details of the case
> ("extenuating circumstances," etc.).  I don't know what the law says must
> be done when illegal tuition has been charged.  Maybe it says that
> reimbursement is required.  If the law doesn't mandate reimbursement or
> any particular punishment, I say they should just forget about their
> mistake and move on.  No one will lose.  The students were getting a good
> deal on their educations.  The harm will come from forcing the state to
> reimburse former students who clearly don't deserve the money.  Huge sums
> will come out of state coffers that are needed for welfare and road
> repair.  It would be a disasterous mistake.

How they are punishes is one thing but if they broke a law, even a stupid
law, they should in some way be punished. As you said they make the laws
so if they are dumb enough to break their own law they should be punished
worse of all.

I'm sure the state is wasting far more money on other things than they
would on any refund such as this. For all I care they should be forced to
take the money out of dinners and first class air travel etc and put it
into welfare. That'll happen when hell freezes over but it's what should
be done.

> > If your law of working for $.50/hr did exist they could suddenly decide
> > to charge us all with crimes and in some cases do just that or these old
> > shitty laws. You can't randomly decide to enforce or not enforce laws or
> > they don't really work at all.
>
> The decision to enforce a law is not made at random.  But I agree with
> your implication that laws that will not be enforced should probably be
> changed.  We do then run into the problem I mentioned earlier:  It takes
> more work to get rid of an old worthless law than it takes to ignore it
> altogether (stop enforcing it).

If it's on the books it should be enforced. The truth of the matter is
that they can't enforce a great many laws because it'd totally wreck the
system but that leads to selective enforcement which isn't really fair at
all. Layer after layer of crap in the system until it finally just clogs
and stops working altogether.

> > It is insane but randomly ignoring things won't help the problem any.
> > There is a long history of such laws showing up many years later and
> > being used to accomplish various nasty things. I seem to remember a few
> > years ago a big trouble because lots places were using old laws against
> > oral/anal sex to punish homosexuals or anyone they felt like targeting.
> >
> > Again this is why I think all non-constitutional laws should be on a
> > time limit and have to be reenacted to keep them on the books.
>
> That sounds like a reasonable idea, but I don't know enough about law to
> take a definite stand on it.  They would have to make it easy to review
> the laws.  Think of how much work it would be to review the merits of
> every statute every 10 years!!

It'd give legislative folks something to do for their paychecks besides
sit around making new bad laws. It'd force them to simplify the legal
system enough that they could manage it. If they can manage it it gives
the rest of us a chance to manage it too. Then if they want to add new
laws they might not have time to keep every old law on the books. They'd
have to pick the old laws they think are important to work on keeping on
the books. They'd also spend less time writing new laws to cancel out old
laws as the old laws would just go extinct if they no longer had support.
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