Legamorons

Friday, September 30th, 2005

In The Trackable Society, Arnold Kling defines a legamoron (legal oxymoron) as any law that could not stand up under widespread enforcement. Some examples:

  • laws against marijuana use
  • immigration laws
  • laws against sexual harassment
  • laws against betting on sports
  • speed limits
  • software licenses
  • laws against music sharing
  • laws requiring people to pay social security taxes for household workers

A really big example:

In fact, the entire tax system could be viewed as a legamoron. Congress deliberately underfunds the computer systems and audit department of the IRS. Otherwise, if households and businesses had to get everything on their returns exactly right, the cost of tax compliance probably would eat up the entire Gross Domestic Product, and there would be nothing left to tax.

In A Case for Immigration, he explains that “we are all illegal”:

For politicians, selective enforcement is a very useful tool. Having lots of laws on the books that are not obeyed means that we are at the mercy of the political class, because all of us are doing something illegal. We might be speeders, marijuana users, accounting standards violators, sexual harassers, etc. Any time a politician wants to, he can come after us.

Legamorons give politicians the option of going after political targets while leaving most constituents alone. If you were a crusading attorney general from New York, you could choose to prosecute people entirely on the basis of their unpopularity. When we are all illegal, any of us could be attacked by a crusading attorney general at any time. Only those of us who keep quiet are safe.

Selective enforcement means the rule of men, not the rule of laws. It means that your protection against politically-motivated legal action is only as good as your PR firm.

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