Why People Stay Libertarian, the Never-Ending Series
Secret laws and secret regulations.
He told me that there is a whole U.S. Code section that is simply blank for this reason.
And remember, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
I won’t pretend that I knew about the existense of the Esoteric Code before today, but I get the impression it’s a lot harder for Kevin Drum to integrate this kind of thing into his world-view than it is for me. My next congressional hero (after John Murtha and Dick Durbin – pdf) will be the man or woman who insists on holding hearings on the secret legal regime with an eye toward publicising or repealing it.
Comment by Ben Ryan —
December 12, 2005 @ 10:11 pm
Okay, I knew about the secret regulations – Boing Boing was on that when it first started happening in 2002 – but I’m skeptical about this ”blank section of the U.S. legal code” thing.
Any pointers to actual authoritative sources?
Comment by Gary Farber —
December 13, 2005 @ 10:00 am
Alternatively: ”the existense of the Esoteric Code
Hmm? Wha? What ”Esoteric Code”? (Beyond Aleister Crowley.) I see a construct, but I don’t know which part of the elephant is even being asserted, let alone felt.
(I do hate vagueness, basically, particularly as part of an apparent argument.)
Comment by Gary Farber —
December 13, 2005 @ 8:30 pm
I didn’t get around to it for a time, but the rest of Volokh’s comments seem quite sensible to me, here, also. I’m surely dumb, because I’m not getting the fuss here. We’re not asserting a federal Right To Board Boeing Airplanes, so, beyond that, what?
Mind, if there’s a civil liberty to be defended, I’m eager to sign on. I’m just not seeing one here. I’m utterly prepared to be educated and corrected.
Comment by Nell —
December 14, 2005 @ 8:58 am
As if the actual laws themselves weren’t so impenetrable in many cases as to be functionally blank! I, too, would like more, um, evidence of absence.
If it’s so, this kind of meta-meta-issue of law seems like a constitutional question, something for a court to rule (I’d hope) impermissible.
Comment by Anton —
December 17, 2005 @ 4:48 am
Bloody hell. What does it take to sneak a ”well-formed” comment through this damn filter? The world will have to struggle on without my informative response to Gary.