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Criminal law out of control
Posted by David Hardy · 11 December 2006 01:26 PM
Over at Cato, Gene Healy has posted Criminalization Out Of Control.
"A research team led by professor John Baker of Louisiana State Law School recently estimated that there are more than 4,000 separate federal criminal offenses. That number, inexact as it is, vastly understates the breadth of the criminal law, because the federal criminal code, in turn, incorporates by reference tens of thousands of regulatory violations never voted on by Congress."
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
James Madison