Plan for the Restoration of the United States of America, a Representative Republic

n/a | 2/21/2009 | J Alfieri

[laxcoach]

i could live with that, but for the record, I meant a super majority of states.

[SwankyC]

What about a new amendment that forbids the taking anything of value from one person to redistribute to another - the only exception being where the money is paid to someone performing a job/service for the govt.

Absolutely no form of welfare, bailout or stipend for anything.

[Secret Agent Man]

Sounds good so far.

[JoeA]

Wow! That sounds great, I’ll see if I can work up the language.

[RobbyS]

Nope, I mean the guy who translates English into lawyerese and finds out where it fits in the legal code. Any halfwit can understand the faux-Latin once he has seen enough of it. I speak as one.

[Publius Valerius]

Any halfwit can understand the faux-Latin once he has seen enough of it. I speak as one.

I'm not talking about anything like that. I'm talking about writing a piece of legislation that is easily and plainly interpreted by lawyers and judges and is otherwise well crafted. Incompetent drafting is common, particularly at the state level, but it does happen in Congress from time to time.

You don't need latin, you don't need "lawyerese." You need a competent lawyer that understands the subject matter and can also write. Banning lawyers would lead to more incompetent drafting. This, I suppose, would be good for the rest of the lawyers, since incompetent drafting means lots and lots of long, drawn out litigation. Yay! Bad for businesses, though. Sad. :(

[RobbyS]

Do you actuallythink that the lawyers in the Texas legislature actually do more than provide a rough draft, or that they care if the statute is carelessly written? IAC, more often than not he simply hands theam a proposal drafted by some lobbyist. It has been a heck of a long time since American lawyers thought of attempted to codify state law with the rigor that one finds in the European civil law. American lawyers are gunfighters, not scholars. That is why a German lawyer makes a lot less than an American lawyer, on the whole. A german lawyer can usually tell you what the law is just by looking at it. His search might take a month while an American law might take six, on similar cases.

[sonic109]

I love it ..Lets carry it to DC when we have a million man march ...

[Publius Valerius]

Do you actually think that the lawyers in the Texas legislature actually do more than provide a rough draft, or that they care if the statute is carelessly written? IAC, more often than not he simply hands theam a proposal drafted by some lobbyist.

In years past, I worked in "media relations" for my state legislature, which is to say that it was my job to spin, particularly for newly introduced bills. At least in my state, lobbyists didn't write anything. They might plant the seed for a bill in a legislator's head, but they didn't write. The actual task of writing itself was done by a separate agency (put a part of the legislature), and I suspect that this is not altogether uncommon, particularly since this is more or less how it's done at the Congressional level.

American lawyers are gunfighters, not scholars.

Yes, and I'm quite excited for all the non-lawyer legal scholars to jump in the ring and try their hand at crafting legislation. That can't possibly be a bad idea.

His search might take a month while an American law might take six, on similar cases.

Six months? Wow, that's a patient client. Where do you find those?