Using Wikis to Catch Outdated and Bad Laws? 137
Mick Ohrberg asks: "While listening to NPR this morning, I heard about the ridiculous law, passed in 1675, that orders the arrest of all American Indians entering Boston, and just now, 330 years later, is ready to be repealed. There are a LOT of really outdated and/or inappropriate laws out there; would an 'open' Wiki-style approach to law-making (with appropriate supervision, of course) be able to catch more of these 'bad' laws? Should the law-makers be able to keep track of all these laws, or are the number of laws simply too large for that relatively small group of people to keep track of? The more and more outdated copyright laws also come to mind as an area that could stand some more scrutiny."
Here's a big list of them (Score:5, Informative)
Self-maintaining legislative charters (Score:3, Informative)
If it took a two-thirds or five-eighths majority to add a law without removing a law, those old laws would get cleaned out pretty quickly.
If the also had to reduce the body of law by five or ten percent before the end of every legislative session we'd accomplish the same thing.
Jury Nullification (Score:5, Informative)
One thing that would help a lot would be for more people to be aware of Jury Nullification. While the laws would still exist, unjust laws would be ignored.
There are some good links on this subject at:
As the saying goes There are four boxes to be used in defending our freedom: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Use them in that order.
Re:Colonial America called... (Score:4, Informative)
Or do you think that the day after the Constitution was ratified it was suddenly legal for everyone to kill each other because the state legislatures were too busy celebrating to pass new sets of statutes?
Many are Urban Legends. (Score:4, Informative)
Examples includes "it is illegal to bathe in a tree in Kansas", etc.
State statues are available online and often municipal statutes. Of all the goofy ones that have been presented as "fact", I have yet to see one that is real. Not to say there aren't any, but many of the ones presented as existing are simply jokes that got out of control.
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Evan
Re:Colonial America called... (Score:4, Informative)
More or less. Salem, Massachusetts predates Boston by I believe 4 years (1624 versus 1630), and was the first settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, founded in 1620, was a separate colony until Massachusetts Bay and Plimouth Plantations merged in 1692. However, what happened is that the Massachusetts Bay colony government was transferred to Boston from Salem (I believe as part of the foundation of Boston).
The date of the law in question is important. 1675 is the beginning of "King Phillip's War" (there's a lot of debate about what it should be called, but that was what colonial Americans called it). Metacom ("King Phillip") was the sachem of the Wampanoags, who historically had been allied with the Mass Bay Colony and Plimouth colony (the Wamponoags signed a treaty with Plimouth in 1621). A complex sequence of events strained relations between the Wamponoags and the English colonies, and caused the English to force the Wamponoags to give up their arms in the early 1670s. When a Christian Indian was assassinated by Wampanoags (possibly for espionage), and the killers were executed, the Wampanoags rearmed and began to attack English settlements (in 1675). This led to a terribly destructive war between most of the Native American settlements in New England and the English colonies, though the Mohawks notoriously remained neutral, and there were many Christian Indians who were either neutral or pro-English. There were very heavy losses on both sides (massive losses, really, for the population sizes), the colony of Mass Bay lost its charter, the United Colonies were dissolved, and many Native American's fled the region.
So the law is a vestige of a nasty ethnic war. Even the various neutral Indians were banned from Boston. A lot of Indians were dependent upon English goods because of the drastic changes to their economies and agriculture resulting from deliberate actions by the English - buying land, etc. - and the terrible epidemics of the late 16th and early 17th century after first contact (mostly from contact with the small fishing expeditions who spent time along the New England coast - keep in mind that the first settlers of Plimouth were greeted in English by Squanto).
I can't think of ANY legitimate reason why this law should still be on the books, period.