Friday, February 12, 2016

The Sausage Machine Described

 A law review article reveals the sausage machine which is Congress writing laws.

The truth is that members of Congress do not write the laws; they (or a few of them) decide policy, which gets transmuted into law by staff and staff attorneys employed by members and committees. And when there's omnibus legislation, different people write different parts, not necessarily using the same terminology or legal theories.

This is true now, it was true even with the Constitution.  Anyone who has had experience of a group trying to produce a written product knows the paper does not  magically reflect a group mind, but compromises which fully satisfy no one.

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