For the sake of argument, I think you should try it. I don’t think it’s outrageous that you think you can do it better, but as far as I’m concerned you need to take a stab at it to prove your point.
Not at all. As currently courts would still be held to the standard of determining the constitutionality of the law but they shouldn’t be seen as the interpreters of the law.
On the contrary, the law writers shouldn’t be proposing laws which hold no water under the constitution.
As I said previously, “justifiable homicide” is an easy definition. The courts, per usual, would determine the law as written.
Look, I’m not saying that certain standards might have to be all encompassing but for law writers to try and determine every single set of stipulations that might be happened upon is a recipe for disaster.
The more complex the law is, the more complex the “fix” will have to be.
Ask any attorney if ANY law is foolproof. I won’t posture that I know the right of it, however I know what I feel is right. (I’m sure that will be seen as weakness here)
The courts have gotten caught up in determining law as written instead of what is right. I don’t know who should determine (other than a jury) how the law was ‘meant to be’. The writing of the law won’t be infallible, no matter how complex.
“Justifiable homicide” : The level of force necessary to prevent the same from happening to you or someone else.
Am i missing something?
Yes, there could be all sorts of catchy exceptions but really that is all we need.
Who wrote the first seat belt law? Do you not see this as “setting a standard”, regardless of if it is left up to the States, it is still unconstitutional.
I will work on being astounded by that.
I was perhaps mistakenly under the impression that a person who was so sure that we could do better than the current legislation would have some ideas about how to do it. So if you can’t, who should I ask?
You said “you shouldn’t kill people, ever.” How extensive is your definition now? “Justifiable homicide,” that wasn’t even mentioned in your rule. It isn’t “murder,” so then what is it? Is everything that isn’t murder not a crime? What if you make a mistake in determining what level of force is reasonable under the circumstances?
It isn’t like these aren’t questions that come up all the time in criminal law. They’re questions that we need answers for, because they affect people’s lives. This isn’t intellectual wankery.
Do it then. Cover the bases. And your definitions are going to be more simple and elegant than the actual criminal statutes, right? Not more simple than some fictional 500 pages that don’t exist.
As far as me misconstruing the simplicity of the law, my apologies; it might be because of all those years and dollars I spent learning it.
Kearsen
Just to pick up on you having a go at seat belt law. If it was just about the safety of the individual then I might agree with you that it is a bad thing (do not know enough about your Constitution to know why it might be unconstitutional but let’s put that to one side).
See Risk of injury for occupants of motor vehicle collisions from unbelted occupants
Pretty clear that a substantial increased association of injury or death of belted occupants from unbelted occupants. So I personally would say good law.
It’s not always clear that a law is unconstitutional.
The opposite can also be a recipe for disaster.
I don’t think that’s what courts are supposed to do.
And I don’t think this is what a jury is supposed to do.
So it’s foolish to make it as good as possible?
I’m the King of Thebes and I believe my son is going to grow up to kill me. Am I allowed to kill him to stop that from happening?
New York state? Or were you being rhetorical?
Still unconstitutional? How? Care to be specific—Article and clause?
Here’s a copy, in case you don’t have one on hand.
The McCain/Feingold campaign financing law was written by a couple guys who were trying to to stop monied interests from having too much power in the election precess. But after it was passed a couple loopholes were found and 501s and 527s were born. The act had a hole and it was found. So lit did not work as advertised. But taking it back and altering it is very difficult. Sometimes they are not complicated enough.
When he attempts to kill you, you may have ground to stand upon.
As to the rest, you asked me for hypotheticals so I gave them. A jury would be the only people I would entrust to interpret right (they are given that responsibility currently)
Juries only decide on facts. Judges decide the law.
I believe juries decide upon whatever they hear in court, unless you are a mind reader?
Ok, so if someone gets prosecuted for killing a thief who breaks into his house, then your definition would not be sufficient to justify a homeowner shooting the intruder, and the homeowner would be guilty of murder. It would also seem to justify a person killing someone who exclaimed, “If I get my hands on my son, I’m going to wring his neck for crashing the family minivan!”
However, the point we’re discussing here isn’t to get you to re-write the laws and then pick apart how you would simplify them. The point is that either Congress has to be pretty specific about how laws are to be applied, or the courts are going to have greater latitude to interpret vague laws. Of the two choices, I think Congress going into more detail is preferable, because then at least people can read the law and generally understand what is expected of them. Allowing each court greater leeway to determine what is justifiable would lead to as many different definitions of justifiable as there are judges – get a mean judge and nothing is justifiable, and get a lenient judge and a lot is justifiable. That’s not fair to any defendant.
Finally, it’s pretty clear to me that you haven’t actually looked at the US Code. Most of it is quite understandable if you read it.
Also, have you ever been on a jury? Your misunderstanding of how juries do their work is pretty clear.
Because it would then become a law whether or not he liked it:
*If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law. *
U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 7, cl. 2.
Yes, there’s some badly-written, overly-verbose legislation out there (esp. on tax issues and agricultural policy), but by and large contemporary legislation IMHO is just about as complicated as it needs to be, given the complexity of the issues it must address. We live in an extraordinarily large, rich, heterogeneous society, with a global economic, cultural and military reach. It should come as no surprise that bills usually aren’t just a page or two.
Obligatory Schoolhouse Rock link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ
Are you wringing your son’s neck currently. If you are, it is justifiable for someone to shoot you. 
All of these so called examples are failing, folks. As to the former example about the thief, if he is proven to not held sufficient threat to you then yes, you may be guilty of some other crime.
There are a lot of laws.
As i said before, I am not advocating any change in the judicial or legislative branches. I just want to see laws that hold up become more simplistic in approach. Whether or not that is a pipe dream is the debate here.
You seriously need to relax. These are fairly fundamental principles that we’re talking about, and you’re mistaken.
Here you go (warning, PDF):
You are right, maybe I need to be more hippy and smoke some doobage, eh?
Saying you are wrong is a fundamental flaw in your policy sir. Unless you can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that people have been convicted based solely upon facts and not heresay.
I believe the latter to be true, however much you wish it were otherwise.
Look, you’ve gone from “all we need is a law that says that you can’t kill someone” in post #8 to “of course there’s justifiable homicide” in post #18 to “it’s justifiable when you’re being threatened with death” in post #23 to “there needs to be an imminent threat” in posts #30 and 35.
Your own guideline of what murder is has gotten three times more complex in the course of 23 posts.
And it is still clear that you haven’t acquainted yourself with how Federal laws actually read, so you seem to be arguing against what you imagine laws must look like, rather than how they actually read.
No it wasn’t. It was fine but dishonest commentators on the right were screaming about it to the unsophisticated Republican base, getting them good and angry. The change was a cover your ass moment to get them to shut up.
The problem with sunlight rules is that it allows morons like Mccaughey to get their ducks in a row and lie about what’s in the bill. Allowing five days of comment only allows disinformation to be spread and paid liars to confuse people.
It’s stupid and it would allow the influential to sink any bill they want by putting a Betsy Mccaughey on Fox news to spread her unfounded and willfully dishonest comments.
Your law didn’t specify that.