Allowing Laws to be Broken: A Restriction on Freedom

At its core, each law represents at least a slight infringement of our rights. We give power to our government to provide certain social benefits, which we deem necessary, through the enactment of these laws. Bringing a beneficial and desired result to the nation is society's goal and ought to be the government's when enacting laws. In order to test the efficacy and desirability of a law, and therefore whether it should remain law, a law must be enforced. The population can only evaluate the acceptability of a law through the real-world experiment of common experience. Very few citizens read the laws of the country and only of a fraction of those, or the rest of the country, can understand the convoluted jargon constituting a law. If a law is only sparsely, or sometimes never, enforced, society is deprived of its only practical test of that law. The government has made a statement of power by enacting a law that society may or may not find acceptable, taken away the populace's ability to judge the law, and maintained it as an official policy held over the head of the nation with the omnipresent threat of enforcement.

Superficially, relaxed enforcement, i.e. an allowance of law breaking, appears to be a governmental grant of more individual freedom. However, it is much more insidious than that. It is the government that created the law, and any non-enforcement thereof is only a return to the right once possessed before the law's enactment. The returned right is not the same. It is no longer as robust because it now contains a caveat that the government can excise the right where and when it deems appropriate. The right has been tarnished and used to entrench the government's claim of power to control and limit the rights of its citizens. This result is unacceptable on its own, but the collateral effects are even more dangerous to the liberties of the citizenry.

A relaxed enforcement instills a false belief of governmental leniency in the populace. This results in and encourages lackadaisical behavior in the populace's adherence to the laws and a lazy populace regarding its responsibility of checking the government's infringement of individual rights. By providing some "leniency", the government diverts the population's attention away from other laws that impinge upon individual rights more substantially and eventually desensitize the population leaving them ambivalent to the new found restrictions upon freedom. Unacceptable laws are thus enacted and kept on record through a governmental bribe to the populace of a low level of enforcement. Establishing the power to impinge upon rights allows for the expansion of governmental control of our everyday lives.

Simple Real World Examples

A few small penalty laws are helpful as examples because they are relatively simple and illustrate the same principles underlying more restrictive laws. Most states have open container laws prohibitting the possession of an open container of alcohol in a public space. However, due to a combination of the desires of the population and the police, a compromise arose. Place the open container in a brown-bag and in the majority of jurisdictions no longer will a violation be assessed. When we do not like the laws, we find a way to cheat the effect. While the immediate result is effective, it creates a dangerous mindset: follow the rules you like and not the ones you dislike. If the goal of law is to establish a desirable system to live within, then this is not a sustainable creed. Laws lose their meaning if they can be ignored. Citizens lose interest when new laws are enacted, always believing there will be a loophole somewhere, and are too desensitized when the government actually decides to restrict a fundamental liberty.

The same ramifications are present when looking at another example: jaywalking. Keeping our roads, as well as the pedestrians, safe is a sound justification for the law, but the utter disregard by the population and the police make it a non-entity. By retaining laws such as this, the government has established that it can impose legal restrictions on our liberty that society does not agree with nor find desirable. Through the simple act of non-enforcement, the government has increased its power to impose restrictions on its citizens at its will.

Possible Solution

Enforce all of our laws. The primary purpose is to bring the ramifications of each law into the home of the average citizen. An informed populace is a necessary step to provide the balance of power a democracy ought to have. If the nation agrees with the purpose and the effect (in all likelihood only the effect will ultimately matter), then there is no need for civil unrest regarding that issue. Conversely, if there is public dissent, then it is up to the people to pressure the government into a change of policy. A democracy depends upon the consent of its citizens, and the government ought to deserve the consent with open policy rather than assume the consent from a relatively silent ambivalent populace.

Practicability

When applying the above solution to our simple examples, opponents will indubitably argue impracticability. Conceding that perfect enforcement is impracticable - although with the advances of privacy infringing technology (e.g. cameras, satellites, etc.) it is an ever approaching reality - there is no argument that enforcement cannot be increased. We need not even go into covert methods of enforcement. Simply put, every time a law is broken in front of an officer of the law, it ought to be enforced. Violations, especially the low-penalty ones used above occur all of the time. Only through actual enforcement will the full power of the government's restrictions and ability to restrict register with the ordinary citizen.

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This paper seems to be bringing up more questions for me than I can do justice to, and have therefore left many out of the discussion. In the end, I am not convinced that any one of these questions would not have been a more fruitful central issue, but it seemed worth a try. Questions:

Does leniency in enforcement serve a beneficial role in helping the citizens connect with the executive branch of government? If the legislature is making the rule, but we see the police acting in a lenient way we support, does this create an us against them with only part of the government constituting the 'them'? Is this better than us against the entire government?

Are the mediums for public upheaval effective? Will protest/rebellion work? Should it be more of a referendum style? Populace should not be worried that complaint will cause the government to enforce it more stringently if it is already enforcing it to the fullest extent practicable, but this still begs the question of whether the dissent is effective.

Are the issues different for state and federal governments? State rules affect a population with more similar sentiments, but we still remain one nation.

Is the non-enforcement actually an issue of prioritization? The police have better things to do, and therefore only enforce these laws when there is nothing else to do? This may explain the case for the examples here, but even if that is the case there could be more enforcement.

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-- MattDavisRatner - 27 Mar 2008