In a new book, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch describes the “human toll” of proliferating criminal penalties.
“Criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in 2019. Gorsuch elaborates on that theme in a new book, showing how the proliferation of criminal penalties has given prosecutors enormous power to ruin people’s lives, resulting in the nearly complete replacement of jury trials with plea bargains.
“Some scholars peg the number of federal statutory crimes at more than 5,000,” Gorsuch and co-author Janie Nitze note in Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, while “estimates suggest that at least 300,000 federal agency regulations carry criminal sanctions.” The fact that neither figure is known with precision speaks volumes about the expansion of federal law.
Literally volumes. “By 2018, the U.S. Code encompassed 54 volumes and approximately 60,000 pages,” Gorsuch writes, while “the Code of Federal Regulations spanned about 200 volumes and over 188,000 pages” as of 2021.
Too bad Gorsuch couldn’t have touched on most judges’ tendency to scratch their name on whatever a prosecutor sticks in front of them without reading anything beyond their signature block. That basically gives the prosecutor near-complete control over the court and the criminal docket. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
When juries are composed of a bunch of holier-than-thou types who seem to love the opportunity to “sock it to them”, can they really be called a “jury of our peers”? Juries must include those who have been screwed over by the system. Only then will they become a true jury of our peers!!!!! And that is when things will change!
They can start by downgrading CP possession to a misdemeanor again.
Keeping it a felony won’t make it gradually disappear from the Internet.
I enjoy reading the comments on the articles this rag puts out. Educational. With that being said, we’ve noted here in the forum everyone in the USA could be nailed for a crime or two or three daily they did not know was a crime (even with an alleged fair notice in the back of the local newspaper or online or whatever process was used) that DA feels could be applied with their shady logic and thinking. This is an outgrowth of the political process by those who consider and pass legislation to codify laws and by those who have to enforce them once they are discovered to be violated.
There in lies problems…the DA who wants to be tough on crime with no discretion on their resume for potential higher office whims and those who pass into law these laws want to have the cred to say they are representing their people properly for potential higher office whims or staying power in the office they are currently in. There is never any thought of the possibility there are laws on the books already which address issues or the fact there are very possibly too much on the books that more is not required. These people are refining already existing laws by taking judicial discretionary power away from those in robes and legislating the country in a country that was not in the eyes of the founding fathers.
If the tax code and the USC/CFR were printed and literally stacked side by side, it would be scary to see that illustration in person to know that is what our country has come to in operating daily by Joe/Jane Q. Public or else.
What a hypocrite. So many of Gorsuch’s opinions side with prosecutors and the “government.” These “people” will say anything to sell a book. Look at what they DO, not what they say (or in this case, write).