That poor man in the straightjacket is having nightmares again. He is crying out in his sleep and banging his head off the walls: [note: link to article in UK Times may not be available to readers outside of UK]
EUROPEAN governments are to scrap dozens of “unnecessary” and “patronising” EU laws and directives under a plan to make the Union less bureaucratic and more in touch with the lives of its citizens.
The “bonfire of the diktats” will put an end to Europe-wide rules on the length of ladders that window cleaners can use, and laws on the materials that have to be used for children’s playgrounds.
The ambitious plan to roll back the rules made by the European Commission, which is being championed by the Dutch Government and supported by Britain, is a response to the growing concern that Brussels interferes too much in daily life, and that more decisions should be left to national governments.
About half of all laws in Britain are drawn up in Brussels and then adopted by Westminster. For environmental legislation, nearly 90 per cent of laws are made in Brussels, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs threatened with fines if it does not put them into effect. There are 2,500 EU directives in force, with hundreds added every year.
A bit of ‘nice-guy’ PR for the run-up to the European Parliament elections to get us in a positive frame of mind. It is just a tease really. Seldom have I seen a proposal that is going nowhere on so many levels.
For every regulation they manage to scrap, two more will pop up to replace it. And even if they somehow manage to stop Brussels producing more laws, they will simply be minted at national level instead. That is what governments do. They have no other skills to offer the marketplace.
Persuading government not to enact new laws is like trying to persuade birds not to fly. You cannot change the nature of the beast. You have to clip its wings.
Well, Al Gore as a VP “streamlined” our federal government.
Good luck to you guys!…You will need it.
“…even if they somehow manage to stop Brussels producing more laws, they will simply be minted at national level instead. That is what governments do. They have no other skills to offer the marketplace.”
Why would national governments legislate laws they had stopped at EU level? Or do you just mean laws in general? In which case so what – of course national governments will make new laws. That is what they’re supposed to do. They don’t exist solely to offer skills to the market place (whatever that means).
The amusing thing I found about the story is that the 25 governments of Europe have until December to agree on 40 laws to be axed. I wonder what sort of population weighted, double majority (or whatever) voting system they’ll use to decide which laws to axe.
Kenny: the thing is, some folks here, including myself, believe that law is a thing that is discovered or at least, divised, for the purpose of implementing Justice. Once one has discovered/divised a sufficiency of laws, one should stop – there is no further need for lawmaking. Thereafter, anything added is merely a lawless imposition.
Fair enough. Now define justice, and explain why those who hold a different view of what justice is are wrong.
EG
Julian:
I’m no expert on anthropology but human societies have been around for thousands of years. Are you saying that we should have the same laws as the egyptians or the builders of stonehenge? When do you decide what is a sufficiency? Where in history would you have stopped and said we have a sufficiency of laws? As technology and our value systems change, laws need to be adapted and new ones introduced. How to deal with the dissemination of child pornography on the internet for example.
I agree that government should keep the lawmaking business to a minimum as our law is now so complicated that I’ve no idea if I’m upholding it half the time and some of the pedantry that comes out of europe (size of health warnings on cigarrette packs etc) is a nonsense. I’d like to see far fewer laws which fits with the point I’m trying to make – that the laws that govern our society should never be fixed at any moment in time. I’d hate to think that in 100 years they’d be the same as now. The problem is that as society gets more complicated we get more laws to deal with it but don’t forget that the legislative process isn’t just about making new laws, it also involves ammending and discarding old ones which you seem to imply is a bad thing when you say there is no further need for lawmaking.
Kenny: Why do you want to legislate society? Julian Morrison points out correctly that we do not need laws that address every aspect of our evolving existence – an established body of laws, if good, will cater for that. A theft is a violation of private property whether committed by a medieval cutpurse or a 21st century hacker…
The problem with most laws is that they have a (very) passing acquintance with justice. If, however, laws are designed well – and common law seems to be a good way of arriving at a comparatively decent set of laws, justice should be an emergent property of such laws.
One of the messages of Samizdata.net is the state is not your friend meme – states natural tendency is to politicise everything in sight by churning out laws that transform social and economic interactions into political ones.
That is where David’s article is coming from – the EU’s pathetic attempt to roll itself back is indeed laughable…
Kenny:
Legitimate laws are the ones that enforce our rights. All the other laws are bull.
There was actually quite a tradition for looking at laws like this in Great Britain – it is called the common law, law that isn’t written down anywhere but just is because everybody agrees it’s right.
Of course, when Democracy got a hold and the Fabians got into parliament, that went right out the window.
Society pretty much has to have legislation. At a minimum, there must be regulation and enforcement of property rights and enforcement of the rule of law. As things change (and Kenny is right, society does constantly change), then sometimes new laws are required and old ones become pointless.
It is generally true that governments over-legislate, and some cultures are more more susceptible to this than others. Unfortunately, in Britain, we suffer from a general propensity to actually follow the rules, which is why we are probably the only EU nation which enacts and enforces all the EU directives.
I don’t think it really helps to bemoan the EU’s admittedly fairly feeble attempts to repeal some legislation. It’s not going far enough, true, but it’s a start and it’s something that should be encouraged, not laughed at.
EG
Euan’s point is a good one, common law societies are used to relatively few laws that are taken seriously and thus implement and enforce all the BS that comes from Brussels. Societies with the Napoleonic tradition of codified laws are used to an overabundance of laws that can be ignored for the most part, they therefore sensibly ignore much of what comes from Brussels.
I have always believed that apart from basic constitution type law, or more correctly rights, legislation should come with an expiry date attached. All law would thus seize to be in effect after a certain number of years unless specifically prolonged by the legislature. This should keep the scope and complexity of the legal cannon down to what is appropriate for society at any given moment in time. Or at the very least it should keep too MP busy deciding what to keep and what to scrap to enact many new legislations.
The ambitious plan to roll back the rules made by the European Commission, which is being championed by the Dutch Government and supported by Britain, is a response to the growing concern that Brussels interferes too much in daily life, and that more decisions should be left to national governments.
Rolling back the EU would be a start. The next step would be the national governments themselves.
The notion of letting the make the laws, just don’t follow them is a weak, passive approach to the problem. It merely allows the laws to exist, and gives the enforcers rope to use when and if they need to. As long as you are mostly compliant, they will allow you your small mischiefs. If you are incorrigible (i.e. truly demand your liberty) they will throw the book at you bible and verse. Having a stack of laws that are slightly abided by is a very dangerous thing. I’d much rather have a simple set of rules clearly understood. The function doesn’t work, of course, the greater the distance, literally, between the governers and the governed. Having the size of toilet seats dictated from Brussels or DC is nonsense in the practical sense of the word.
To equate justice with law, and law with government, is an elementary (and disastrous) mistake. An action is not rendered just by the fact that a government wills it. Nor is government the sole, nor even the best, way of discovering whether something is just. To define that which is just as that which a government does is the essence of totalitarianism. In such a view there are no restraints upon government because there are no realities other than power.
Kenny asks: “I’m no expert on anthropology but human societies have been around for thousands of years. Are you saying that we should have the same laws as the egyptians or the builders of stonehenge?”
I see “law” as conceptually similar to “science” – a process of refinement towards an abstract goal. As the state of understanding improves, law will need occaisional changing. Examples of improvements include the concept of self-ownership and the ending of slavery.
To understand the difference between this, and legislatures, consider this analogy: “an improvement in the state of science due to research and reasoning” versus “science being ordered to change its mind because the goverment says so”.
Personally, I reckon the legitimacy of the law in England peaked in the Victorian era. Some things remained to be repealed, but not much needed adding.
Adriana Cronin says:
” A theft is a violation of private property whether committed by a medieval cutpurse or a 21st century hacker…
The problem with most laws is that they have a (very) passing acquintance with justice. ”
But that is the problem- you’ll find little argument in favor of the thief, in whatever century- that theft is wrong is not that controversial, and there is not much need to argue that position.
The question is, what is just? One of the reasons Rawls has had such influence is that he attempts to rigorously answer that question. My feeling is that what he comes up with is mostly a justification for what he believed prior to the attempt, which is the normn for political philosophers.
My feeling is that Justice is not something that exists independently of humanb siociety- the universe could care less. Moreover different people will always value different things to greater and lesser degrees. The purpose of a system of laws is to keep them from killing each other over that fact.
I may be a reactionary, but I don’t think I can go with Julian Morrison’s Victorian Golden Age. (Would that be before or after the fusion of law and equity, Julian?)
One certainly shouldn’t make law for the sake of it, but the world does change, new facts come to light, conflicting decisions need to be reconciled. Most things do not need to be regulated, but occasionally we do need arbitrary codes for mutual convenience. (Think of the Rules of the Road.) None of this is discovery, though it is consistent with a Common Law approach of the law serving the practical needs of the people to mediate between competing claims and established rights.
There’s the rub. Our traditional justice is the abstracted negotiation, and, in statute and precedent, pre-negotiation, of conflict. It seeks satisfaction, not completeness. It is not compatible with absolute conceptions of justice whether they purport to derive from a priorideduction, arbitrary authority, or shifting bureaucratic expediency in pursuit of social goals.
The current regulatory ethos, that pretty much everyone here rejects, is informed by one line of Civil Law tradition where the role of the Law is indeed to provide abstract Justice, to perfect society by directing the correct way to live. It’s closer in concept to the Islamic idea of justice than the Common Law one.
How does this mesh with the original post? Well for most Euro-pols the activity of the state expresses aspiration for society. They have decided a Good Government is one that is close to the people. It is not they’ve noticed the practical disadvantages of centralised bureaucracy. (It’s practical functions or dysfunctions are not its point on the first place.*) It is the moral effect of distance and disengagement they find to be a problem.
[*Once you get this EU regulation makes a lot more sense. Whereas ordinary Whitehall directives may be driven by control-freakery, objectively counterproductive, and impossible to comply with, the paperwork and monitoring may be more time consuming and costly than the relevant activity, but they are rarely theoretically impossible. On the other hand the EU imams can offer impossible, procedurally self-defeating, or utterly incomprehensible injunctions, as long as the unattainable object is some common good.]
Julian, Adriana, L.Spooner:
For what it’s worth I agreed with David’s original comments. There is a worrying tendency now that when some (perceived or real) problem exists in society (obesity, smoking, terrorism et) the government has to legislate for it regardless of civil liberties. National governments if anything tend to be at least as bad as the EU (which to be fair, although it seems like the ultimate nanny state, most of their legislation applies to business law which isn’t always a bad thing). I most certainly do not want to legislate society. I agree with Julian’s argument of law as “a process of refinement towards an abstract goal” (I presume the abstract goal is something like fairness and justice for all, whatever that may mean) and isn’t inconsistent with what I argued above. I don’t think governments should dictate our morality.
On response to L.Spooner about law which upholds our rights and on which everyone agrees, this sounds good but consider the following scenario:
a woman is eight months pregnant with a cloned version of Harold Shipman. Should laws have prevented this from happening? Should the baby be aborted? Would centuries old common law cover this or does technology throw up entirely new moral issues? Would everyone agree on these moral issues? The issue of upholding rights is not so simple with cloning and abortion. Most people (not all) think cloning is wrong and should be banned yet it is difficult to see how it affects anyone’s rights.
In the case of abortion, it cannot be legal for society to say that the mother must have this baby – she has an inalienable right to her body. She’s a bloody slut and a fool to if she gets an abortioin, but that’s life. Some are sluts, some aren’t.
Should it be legal to have clones of Harold Shipman? Personally, I think NO. Personal sovereignty, if this is an axiom we want to uphold, requires that we err on the side of caution in regards to invading the bodies of others. Thus, we have to assume that a fertilized egg has a right to itself. Since cloning requires tampering with fertilized eggs (the core of the egg is removed and another core is injected), cloning has to be an illegal invasion of another person’s body.
But wait, you’ll think, what about the invasion of a fetus that an abortion is? Sure, it’s an invasion, but it is a justified invasion, see. This is where it gets real tricky.
The fetus is trespassing.
WHAT? It’s a bloody fetus how can it be trespassing?
Well, it has signed no contract with the mother. Ergo, its presence in the womb of the mother is entirely an act of good will by the mother. If she then doesn’t want the fetus anymore, well.. She can expel it. Since no peaceful means exist, meaning no means that won’t kill it, she has the right to kill it.
If the abortion is really late and somebody volounteers to pay for the upkeep of the baby, the abortion may be turned into a premature birth – the mother has only the right to expel the fetus – and the baby can then be kept alive on life-support.
I am personally against abortion and will not condone it myself, but neither will I say that it’s a criminal act. It’s a morally undesirable act but so is prostituting oneself and that’s no crime either.
If one assumes self-ownership as the one inalienable right, the law is kind of a tautology of self-ownership.
Kenny, cloning is nothing more than the artificial construction of an “identical” twin. Even twins born minutes apart and raised together end up with different personalities, abilities, appearances. An artificial twin born decades later would be utterly unlike the original. There is no need to fear the cloning of “bad guys”
I personally see nothing against cloning, except that it’s still experimental and could give the resulting child nasty genetic defects.
But the police DNA database would say the clone was the same person, so he might be officially, whatever his contingent charateristics. Biometric ID is infallible, you know. Mr Blunkett says so.
If you think cloning is ok just imagine thousands of Blunkett clones.
Why should that be a problem? Only one of them can be Home Secretary at a time.
A Blunkett in every home!
L. Spooner:
Reasoning by analogy is a neccessary evil- we would be hard pressed to reason in any other way, about most things. But it has its dangers. A foetus is not at all like a trespasser, and arguments based upon that analogy inevitably founder upon shoals of their own making.
If I gave the impression above that I am a relativist, I am sorry- I have a conception of justice, and it is not subject to the shifting tides of fashion. I have simply been warned away from attempting to prove it by the example of better thinkers than myself. And when it comes to the law- well, the law rarely touches the hem of justice, which is all to the good- it is hardly fit to.
So I won’t try to justify my conception of justice through legalisms- they are in fact an excellent mechanism for coming to an unjust accord over tendentious issues.
But abortion, to me, is simple. At what point are you dealing with more than one human being? That question, of course is far from simple, but I think that there are areas of black and white, bracketing a central region which is of varying shades of grey.
I have no qualms about the abortion of a blastocyst- not even those that would make me say that, while I deplore it, I would not outlaw it. When dealing with matters of life and death, to deplore is not enough, or it is too much. If I have qualms about early term abortion, it is entirely on behalf of the mother- I have known a number of young women who have had abortions, and have been struck by how much more painful it was for them than they had expected- but that is certainly not a reason to legislate against it.
Late-term abortions fall into a different category- you will not convince me that late partial birth abortions do not amount to infanticide (and you will not convince me that infanticide is is just)- they do, it is demonstrable, and that is why organizations like NOW have called in the services of certain ethicists who argue for the legitimacy of infanticide. The fatal flaw in RvW is that it fails to address this central question- no doubt because the question is contentious, and because they had a result in mind.
Given that it is possible to abort at a point where these considerations have not yet come into play (assuming a certain view of the world- this is why RvW is written as it is- the Justices refused to acknowledge what I assume to have been their own secular views- views, I might add, that mirror my own) I see little justification for late term abortions, short of saving the mother from death or maiming.
Sorry for the US-centric view of my post- I know our laws better than yours.
Oh, and as for Blunkett- I would go farther. Clone Hitler if you like- just keep an eye on him. While I am nort sanguine, exactly, about the pitter-patter of thousands of little fuehrer feet, I also believe that without a congenial environment Der Fuerher would have been just like all of the other failed painters I see here in New York who are eaten up because they want to rule the world, and can’t get a letter to the editor published (hat tip: Mark Helprin). Let’s just make sure the environment stays uncongenial- if we fail in that I think there will be more than enough aspirants to his position in history stepping up to fill his shoes.