We need to rid ourselves of the judges and lawyers. A society does not need professional liars and the judges could be replaced by election like mayors and councilmen. Rewrite the laws to make them understandable by laymen, and get rid of law schools. The system of precedence and review of laws is out of date, and probably is anathema to a free society.
"The system of precedence and review of laws is out of date, and probably is anathema to a free society."
Especially so since the legal system is such a bureaucracy now. Obviously precident has to have some weight, I just think it is overdone.
I propose we do the same thing for doctors and engineers. Who needs professional licensing of any sort? Let's allow high school drop-outs to be neurosurgeons. Great idea!
Rewrite the laws to make them understandable by laymen
If you can write a bankruptcy or securities law that can be understood by a layman and still work, I'll eat my hat.
The system of precedence and review of laws is out of date, and probably is anathema to a free society.
You don't like common law? Move to France.
Judges are elected in many states.
Rewrite the laws to make them understandable by laymen, and get rid of law schools.
Most of "the laws" consist of the body of experience and tradition which exists in a community, as represented through past decisions of judges (in some cases, stretching back hundreds of years). If you leave a banana peel on your front doorstep and somebody trips and sues you, they don't sue you under the Banana Peel Law which exists in a book somewhere - they sue you under the tradition in your state that people shouldn't leave things lying around where they know others can trip over them. This is called the "common law" - the body of tradition. Laws which the legislature has ever actually passed are called "statutes". Most law (more or less) is common law, because the legislature would have its hands full trying to pass "The People Should Look Where They Are Going Act", the "Banana Peels Are Bright Yellow And People Should Be Expected To Notice Them Act", etc. This is why you can't simply "rewrite" the laws - most of it wasn't deliberately "written" to begin with, and in any case there's simply too much.
The system of precedence and review of laws is out of date, and probably is anathema to a free society.
The point of precedent is that a judge, when trying to figure out what the traditional rule is, obviously first tries to find out what everybody before him did. If it's flat-out never come up before, or if times have changed so much that the old rule would lead to a crazy result, he takes a stab at making a new one based on the closest available cases. If the legislature doesn't like the result, they can pass a statute - basically overwriting the tradition - and giving a hard-and-fast rule for future judges to apply.