Thursday, 28 March 2002

The CBDTPA Is Immune to (Conventional) Criticism

Now this a scary thought:

The CBDTPA Is Immune to (Conventional) Criticism And so it is with the CBDTPA. The details of enforcement are absurd.

The framers of the bill have some dim sense of this, and they have tried to address it. The CBDTPA includes a few clauses to the effect of "And enforcement of this law shall not be absurd." Imagine a law that says "It shall be illegal to posses the ability to jaywalk, but the rights of the people to move freely shall not be lessened." Well, simply saying that doesn't make it so. You can have the law enforced and absurd, or not enforced (in which case, let's leave it off the books.) Same for the CBDTPA; the law as written has some attempts to wave the absurdity away, but it just doesn't work. It is impossible to salvage the invalid form of the law, no matter how you gussy up the appearence, just as no matter how much you add to an argument based on affirming the consequent, you still have an absurd argument.

No comments:

Post a Comment