Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

mlive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 35 posts

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#21

Post by joonix »

jellicle wrote: post #18

Legislatures run mainly on norms and customs. As people have pointed out already, no legislature can bind a future version of itself (which is why the 60-vote filibuster is unconstitutional, but I digress). Congress could establish better customs, of course. It is customary in many nations to limit legislation to a single topic and to codify the laws on a single topic in a single published Act. For example, virtually…

Agreed. The states do it this way as well. I worked on updating some statutes after a legislative session and it was a nightmare. Many bills conflict with each other. Often, nobody even knows what the latest version of a statute really is. It's a joke.

In some states, such as Georgia, the public can't even read statutes! They have to buy a copy. Pay to know the law to which you are bound. How does that make any sense at all?

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#22

Post by Dove »

csense wrote: post #20

If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it. If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Congress can send it to me in 500 pieces, which I can veto individually.

That's not practical. Sometimes things need to stick together in a package, and it might be bigger than two pages. As a simple example, if you had a bill that included "Fund this new program" and "Levy this new tax to cover it", those provisions should be passed (or vetoed) together.

And the smallest reasonable package might be a lot bigger than that simple example. If you're going to patch something like, for example, the tax code, it could take you well north of a hundred pages to put together a package that coherently accomplishes what you want to. It might not be practical to break it up. There could be many complex clauses that don't accomplish what they're supposed to without the simultaneous enactment of many other complex clauses.

I'm not saying I like long and complex bills. I hate them. But recognize that law is like software (in fact, from a certain perspective, law is software). It should be kept as simple as possible, but "as simple as possible" might still be very complex.

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#23

Post by pserwylo »

Slightly off topic, but this reminds me of a great talk on simplifying legislation so that law people can actually read and understand it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_siegel_let_s_simplify_legal_ja...

In the talk, Alan discusses how they simplified a non-trivial set of legislation to something more like an advertising brochure. They then confirmed with appropriate lawyers that it was equivalent to the original legislation.

I would love to see a NPO or volunteer group spring up, comprised of marketers and lawyers, who retroactively applied this technique to existing laws, then published them freely.

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#24

Post by anigbrowl »

ejdyksen wrote: post #6

This is my congressman. Here's why he's interesting: He doesn't miss any votes, and he explains every single vote (even boring, inconsequential votes) on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash Here's an example of a boring explanation: https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/51291397874801... Here's a longer explanation: https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/51246580545949...

Here's an example of a boring explanation:

He explained why the vote took place. He didn't tell you why he voted for it.

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#25

Post by protomyth »

csense wrote: post #20

If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it. If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Congress can send it to me in 500 pieces, which I can veto individually.

So, no Federal Budget during your administration. While your at it, perhaps you want to look at the actual text density on federal bills.

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#26

Post by saraid216 »

joonix wrote: post #21
jellicle wrote: post #18

Legislatures run mainly on norms and customs. As people have pointed out already, no legislature can bind a future version of itself (which is why the 60-vote filibuster is unconstitutional, but I digress). Congress could establish better customs, of course. It is customary in many nations to limit legislation to a single topic and to codify the laws on a single topic in a single published Act. For example, virtually…

Agreed. The states do it this way as well. I worked on updating some statutes after a legislative session and it was a nightmare. Many bills conflict with each other. Often, nobody even knows what the latest version of a statute really is. It's a joke. In some states, such as Georgia, the public can't even read statutes! They have to buy a copy. Pay to know the law to which you are bound. How does that make any sense…

I'm pretty sure that's not merely nonsensical, but actually illegal.

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#27

Post by saraid216 »

mangostache2 wrote: post #5
rayiner wrote: post #3

Bills are a lot easier to understand if you think of them as source code diffs. This bill is basically requiring them to provide context diffs which is actually a pretty decent idea.

They should just make a law that requires all legislation to be hosted publicly on github.

1) There are people working on that.

2) How would that change anything whatsoever?

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#28

Post by saraid216 »

csense wrote: post #20

If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it. If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Congress can send it to me in 500 pieces, which I can veto individually.

Or you could re-instate the line veto?

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#29

Post by benpbenp »

dctoedt wrote: post #8

Minor point: Absent a constitutional amendment, I don't think the bill would be legally binding (it could, of course, establish a social norm within the Congress, enforceable by peer pressure). Suppose that a senator or representative were to introduce a bill that didn't conform to the diff requirement. Suppose also that both houses passed the bill, and the president signed it. I don't think anyone would argue that t…

You could word it like "anyone may ignore any law that doesn't conform to such and such requirements." That would be effectively binding.

Re: Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

#30

Post by walshemj »

joonix wrote: post #21
jellicle wrote: post #18

Legislatures run mainly on norms and customs. As people have pointed out already, no legislature can bind a future version of itself (which is why the 60-vote filibuster is unconstitutional, but I digress). Congress could establish better customs, of course. It is customary in many nations to limit legislation to a single topic and to codify the laws on a single topic in a single published Act. For example, virtually…

Agreed. The states do it this way as well. I worked on updating some statutes after a legislative session and it was a nightmare. Many bills conflict with each other. Often, nobody even knows what the latest version of a statute really is. It's a joke. In some states, such as Georgia, the public can't even read statutes! They have to buy a copy. Pay to know the law to which you are bound. How does that make any sense…

In theory good parliamentary practice is not to allow conflicting motions and any consequentials should have been worked out beforehand.

Also any amendments should be relevant to the original motion - which if applied in the USA would stop a lot of the pork barrel amendments.

Post reply on HN