Don't move... you might break a law

Our current approach to federal law serves lawyers and prosecutors, not justice and the public:

It's for good reason that our Constitution mentions only three federal crimes (treason, piracy, and counterfeiting).

The Founders viewed the criminal sanction as a last resort, reserved for serious offenses, clearly defined, so ordinary citizens would know whether they were violating the law.

Yet over the last 40 years, an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalization the first line of attack -- a way to demonstrate seriousness about the social problem of the month, whether it's corporate scandals or e-mail spam.

At one point on Tuesday, (Supreme Court Justice) Breyer protested: "I thought there was a principle that a citizen is supposed to be able to understand the criminal law." Good luck with that.

There are now more than 4,000 federal crimes, spread out through some 27,000 pages of the U.S. Code. Some years ago, analysts at the Congressional Research Service tried to count the number of separate offenses on the books, and gave up, lacking the resources to get the job done. If teams of legal researchers can't make sense of the federal criminal code, obviously, ordinary citizens don't stand a chance.

As the author points out, this massive framework essentially provides discretionary (read: arbitrary) tools to those in authority, undermining the fundamental principle of equality before the law.

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop