The Law Must Be Free and Accessible to All -- Not Secret and Profitable | Ralph Nader

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-02-10

Summary:

"Imagine this metaphorical scenario. You are cruising along a highway and you are pulled over by a police officer. You're not sure why you were stopped. The patrol officer approaches and gives the signal to roll down the window. You oblige. 'How fast were you going?' the officer might ask after examining your license and registration. You answer honestly. 'Do you know the speed limit on this highway?' might be the next question. Thinking it over, you realize that you do not know. For as long as you can recall driving along that stretch of highway, there were no signs anywhere indicating the speed limit. You don't know if you were speeding or not! You explain this to the officer, and he confirms your suspicion -- there are no speed limit signs on the road. In order to know the speed limit, he explains, you must purchase a highway law codebook. It costs $1000.  The officer proceeds to write you a speeding ticket. Obviously, this scenario doesn't make much sense. If the law is to be understood and obeyed, it must be public information. How can we follow the law if we don't know what it is? This is the astonishingly unfortunate reality for a large number of our nation's laws -- fire codes, building codes, electrical codes, food safety regulations, state and municipal codes and more. Obviously, there is a significant difference between highway laws and technical safety codes, but the root of the issue is the same -- the public must have ready access to the law. The 'signs' must be in plain sight for all to see. Many of these technical codes are drafted by nonprofit corporations, associated with industries, but are incorporated into law by local, state and federal governments -- they are, in effect, corporate laws enforced by the state. If you want to read these legally binding rules of law you must purchase them yearly for $1000 or more per copy. (In other cases, the laws are simply so dated or difficult to locate that the simple act of acquiring them creates significant obstacles to knowing your rights and obligations.) The inability of citizens to know the law poses a very large problem in our democracy. To be informed of the law one needs free and easy access to it. What if dedicated citizens want to educate themselves and others on the many technical standards that govern the infrastructure we all regularly use? What if citizen watchdogs want to engage in debate on policy and regulation? Fortunately, the Supreme Court has several times affirmed the obvious notion that the public law should be free and available to all. Relying on those decisions, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress decided in 2002 that a building code incorporated into law belongs in the public domain. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer even once said, 'if a law isn't public, it isn't a law.' Unfortunately, legal precedent has not stopped certain private organizations from fighting to keep their codes off the Internet, entangled by copyright law and out of the public's hands. Public.Resource.Org is a nonprofit organization founded by the energetic Carl Malamud whose mission is, simply, to put the law online. Malamud's organization has had great success in locating and uploading many state, municipal and public safety codes to fulfill this purpose. Unfortunately, they have also had to endure threats of prosecution from certain state officials or Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) that still claim copyrights on the written law ..."

Link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/the-law-must-be-free-and-accessible_b_4747745.html

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.usa oa.law oa.advocacy oa.litigation oa.pro

Date tagged:

02/10/2014, 16:51

Date published:

02/10/2014, 11:51