A Modest Proposal: The People's Court

[Y2Jay]

I propose to amend the United States Constitution to create the "People's Court":

• Every month, there shall convene a hundred thousand individuals, randomly selected throughout the populace, to choose (by write-in) a list of ten laws to consider for repeal.
• Every month, there shall convene another hundred thousand individuals, randomly selected throughout the populace and each distinct from the group selecting which laws are to be considered for repeal, to vote, by majority rule, for either the continuation or the expiration of these ten laws.
• All laws, both those enacted in the past and those to be enacted in the future, shall be subject to this requirement, with the exception of The Constitution itself, the Bill of Rights, the remaining Amendments to the Constitution, international treaties and alliances, and laws concerning the military and national security.
• No law passed in the future shall be subject to review by the People's Court before the passing of twenty years. This provision does not preclude changes made to laws passed, or their being repealed outright, through other means (such as through a vote of a future legislature that enacted the law).
• All laws that have been struck down by the People's Court shall cease to be in effect no later than five years following their repeal.
• All laws that have been considered for repeal, having either failed to receive a majority vote, or having received a majority but having been vetoed by the Supreme Court, shall not be considered for repeal again until the passing of ten years.
• The Supreme Court shall have absolute veto power over the People's Court, but it shall be able to exercise this veto power only once per law, so that if a motion to repeal a law so vetoed (at least ten years following the veto, according to the provision above) receiving the majority during another convening of the People's Court shall be immune from the veto of the Supreme Court.
• All laws that have been struck down by the People's Court shall be subject to relegislation, but no sooner than twenty years following their repeal.

The above specifies the letter of the amendment.

I will now explain the spirit of the amendment.

For is it not true that laws are passed to remedy a perceived problem, or to improve an unsatisfactory and existing state of affairs?

And is it not also true that a law thus passed with such an intent, owing to the inherent fallacy of man's foresight, might err as to the efficacy of that remedy or that improvement, and that the unintended consequences thereof may result in the worsening of the general welfare of the populace?

And is it not also true that, the hindsight of man being superior to his foresight, that there be a remedy to correct, after the fact, the deleterious consequences of ill-advised laws unforeseen before the fact?

And is it not also true that the foresight necessary to pass good laws before the fact, that is, to enact new laws, is possessed by the few, and thus belongs, as it does in the current state of affairs, to the elected representatives comprising the various legislative bodies of our nation?

And is it not also reasonable that the hindsight to evaluate the efficacy and beneficence of laws after the fact, that is, to review laws that have already been passed, is possessed by the many (if it be true that the saying "hindsight is 20/20" has any grain of truth), and therefore, should rightly be devolved to the public at large, through the power of direct democracy, for which the People's Court makes provision?

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The intent of this legislation is to introduce an equilibrium between the enactment of new laws and the striking down of laws already passed so that in the long run, there will develop a tendency for the sum total of individual laws to remain constant rather than grow inexorably, and further to establish corrective feedback mechanisms for possible ill-advised results of representative democracy by injecting the veto power of direct democracy - via the People's Court.

It is perhaps analogous to natural selection - in my proposed system, a law that "survives" for a long time has not only passed the selective process of a single legislature having passed it, but has "survived" subsequent motions to repeal it. The assumption, of course, is that a law that "survives" the People's Court, as I have constructed it, will be more likely than not to be a "good" law.

The People's Court does not pass any new legislation. The process for enacting new laws through representatives elected by the people remains unchanged. There is constructed a separation of powers between direct and representative democracy; The People's Court reviews and strikes down already passed legislation, and Congresses pass new legislation.

Inasmuch as direct democracy has its excesses and faults, representative democracy must have its own, for to say otherwise would be to say that representative democracy is the perfect form of government (and on planet Earth, it is safe to say that there is no perfect form of government). So perhaps it is necessary and proper to have corrective mechanisms for representative democracy itself, and my proposal provides such a mechanism; in other words, checks and balances between the impulses inherent to direct and indirect democracy should be bidirectional.

What are your thoughts, if any? Could this proposal hinder the libertarian cause (I can't see how it would; it was constructed with the sole intent to advance it)?
Many Thanks.

 

[erowe1]

We better get moving on this if we want Judge Wapner to be involved.

 

[Schifference]

There are many indoctrinated Obama loving blind people that want laws and to be controlled and cared for.

 

[Y2Jay]

There are many indoctrinated Obama loving blind people that want laws and to be controlled and cared for.

I hope to approach societal problems as structural ones, not as character defects. I think that's an overly pessimistic view. I believe that at the root of every problem our nation faces is a hidden flaw in the structure of our government. I think that the fact that legislation is harder to repeal than pass is not a fault of people wanting more laws and more control, but a structural flaw in the Constitution itself. This flaw, I think, is that there is a mechanism for variation (new laws being created), but no mechanism for selection (which laws survive).

The result is that during the early stage of a nation with a Constitutional government, its citizens prosper and flourish, for there are few restrictions obstructing their liberties. But with the passage of time, the steady and inexorable growth in the number of laws and the range of activities it prohibits leads to stagnation and mediocrity.

I think this is the reason why revolutions, historically speaking, have been a universal phenomenon in complex societies with established governments; the laws begin to pile up until freedom is no more. At a certain point, the people rise up, destroy their existing government, and found a new one. The question is, can a government be constructed that remains limited in its scope for all time, adjusting one way or another to meet the exigencies of the time, then reverting back to its original state, so that we can confidently expect that in a thousand years, the essential sociopolitical structure will be unchanged from the present day? Hell no.

But if such a government can be constructed, I maintain that revolutions will disappear. Because as JFK said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

My idea of the "People's Court" is having a thousand small, peaceful revolutions that will render any notion of violent revolution obsolete, unnecessary, and unjustifiable (in the vast majority of circumstances).

 

[eduardo89]

A 'Peoples' Court' already existed.

 

[Occam's Banana]

A 'Peoples' Court' already existed.

Yeah, and so did a "Modest Proposal." (Yikes! What's up with this business?)

 

[Y2Jay]

A 'Peoples' Court' already existed.

Oh come on...and how does this resemble the ideas espoused by Hitler? Seriously, if you're going to resort to Godwin's Law, at least present an argument. (No, there are no concentration camps). I was thinking more along the lines of the Founding Fathers and 5th century Athens, if you wanted to know.