
How Many U.S. Federal Laws Are There? (2013) - dsr_
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/
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dsr_
I'm starting to think that the principle that "ignorance is no excuse" may be
wrong.

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neuromancer2701
I think there is a joke that everyone commits three felons a day. So ignorance
might be a valid excuse or there is just too many laws to even think of
enforcing them.

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hga
No joke, it's in fact a book about how the average white collar worker indeed
commits an average of 3 Federal felonies a day: _Three Felonies A Day: How the
Feds Target the Innocent_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
Innocent/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
Innocent/dp/1594035229)). Forward by Alan Dershowitz, which implies it's not
out to lunch.

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vijayr
We are almost at 2016. Shouldn't something as important as this be maintained
under version control, available for free for everyone in easy formats,
updated as frequently as needed, with a proper API etc?

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hga
Surely you jest.

Probably the most chilling thing about the book _Gun Laws of America, Every
Federal Gun Law on the Books_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Laws-America-6th-
Edition/dp/188963...](http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Laws-America-6th-
Edition/dp/1889632244)) is how many of the ones restricting the government or
are otherwise favorable to gun owners were somehow never incorporated into the
U.S. Code. In the last "Statutes at Large" chapter of the 5th edition are 28
items, each from a separate bill that was passed.

Note that on its face, not incorporating all the language of bills into the
U.S. code is frequently reasonable, e.g. N words that result in changing "10
years" into "15 years". Or legality neutral funding language. But the 28
examples Korwin and company found are not innocent.

I wonder how many other examples might be found in other fields of law....

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vijayr
If someone were to do it (make all the laws available in one place, in machine
readable format, version control it etc) - is that even possible?

Wikimedia might be a good candidate to take on such massive task (they'd need
to restrict write access to actual lawyers)

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codingdave
You would think that at some point, the law books would have been digitized,
so this could just be a database query.

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barneygumble742
Also it can be visualized to see which USC's have the most, least, common,
contradictions. Talk about 'big government.' This can easily be solved. Most
importantly, we can see if there are any gaps rather than waiting for a court
case to pop-up and waste time/money.

