Reducing the laws for average citizens

Note: This is a draft of a constitutional amendment. I am not a lawyer.

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Laws, regulations, and treaties shall be referred to as “legal material” in this document.

All legal material shall be readable and understandable to the average 10^th grader or person who is 16 years old, whichever is younger, who shall hereby be called the “student”, and that average student shall be able to read and understand all of this government's legal material after spending 7 hours total learning and/or reading the legal material.

Also, legal material shall fit on 100 (one hundred) pages or less of 8 ½ by 11 inch paper using 12 pt Times New Roman font with 1 inch margins on each side, using the measurements as established on or before the year 2010.

Laws shall come before treaties which shall come before regulations, and any legal material that occurs after the 100^th page shall not be enforced. Also, any part of any legal material that does occur after the 100^th page shall be removed from the legal material until that section is able to fit within the 100 page limit.

Legal material shall be printed in the order they were passed, with the caveat that all regulations shall be printed after treaties which shall be printed after laws regardless of when the regulation or treaty came into force. In the event that legal material is amended, that legal material shall have the effective pass date of the date of amending.

In the case whereby legal material is passed which are after the 100^th page, they shall exist for 12 (twelve) years before being purged from the record. In no case shall any legal material have effect until it is included in the 100 pages.

All external sources shall count towards the page limit, and may be republished as part of the US law regardless of who hold copyright.

The Constitution does not count toward the page limit.

There shall be no "footnotes" or "endnotes."

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The intent of this proposed amendment is to enable all American Citizens to understand all US laws and regulations without becoming a lawyer. In other words, is this a potential federal crime or a state crime (I can guarantee that with today's federal laws, everyone is a criminal).[1]


 I wanted this to be as simple as possible.
But I didn't want lawyers to poke holes in it. They still will. But hopefully not too many and not too much.

Sources:
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920.html

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

From CBS:
Report: '93 World Trade Center bomber sues to end solitary confinement

The article didn't say anything about how the solitary confinement was being challenged, but I'd assume that the challenge is being done with the 8th amendment to the US Constitution:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

The only bit we're interested in is the last part - cruel and unusual punishment. That phrase is open to lots of interpretation and argument. There are many different opinions on just what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" - in fact, the case which produced the first relevant Supreme Court ruling (Furman v. Georgia) so divided the SCOTUS that each justice wrote their own separate concurrence or dissent. Other cases, including some in recent years have continued to divide the SCOTUS. I'm going to add to the pile of opinions.

A cruel punishment is one that exceeds the crime in terms of severity or goes out of its way to be inhumane. Giving a life sentence to a petty thief would be cruel, as would applying crucifixion or impalement to any offense, even in cases where the offender tortured his victims to death. But the simple death penalty for occurrences of first degree murder is not cruel, nor is life in prison for any malicious act that results in the death of another. The punishment must be appropriate to the crime with sentences increasing in severity based upon the severity of the crime, and with those crimes where physical harm was committed or threatened automatically incurring a higher penalty than any crime where only financial harm was committed.
Unusual is when the punishment is only applied to a few of those who commit crimes of the same type and scale. If most convicted of one specific crime (auto theft, for example) got one sentence, but a select few convicts got a different punishment, that punishment would be unusual - no matter if it was more or less severe that the usual punishment.
Punishment must fit the crime, and the punishment must be applied the same to all convicted of crimes of the same type and severity (thus allowing for different punishments for different amounts of damage done).
This brings me to the death penalty. Many assert that the death penalty is cruel and unusual. While it is almost certainly unusual - most courts hesitate to apply an irreversible penalty, no matter the crime - is is not cruel when applied to those who commit first degree murder (premeditated). Still, due to its irreversible nature, in any case where there is any doubt as to the guilt of the convicted, other means of punishment should be applied, so that if new evidence is found demonstrating the innocence of the accused, they can be exonerated and released. However, in cases where, due to committing the crime in front of cameras/witnesses, taking of souvenirs (a la Ed Gein or Jeffrey Dahmer), confession, or other evidence that leaves no doubt as to the identity of the killer. When someone's life is on the line, there must be no doubt, no chance that someone else committed the crime, so that no one innocent of premeditated murder is executed.

Constitution Outdated? I don't think so!

From CBS:

Professor: Take our country back, from the Constitution

  Original article tabbed and bolded:

I've got a simple idea: Let's give up on the Constitution.

 And what makes you think that this is a good idea?

I know, it sounds radical, but it's really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie.
For example, most of our greatest Presidents -- Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts -- had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.

Thank you for pointing that out. You're right that many presidents often disobeyed the Constitution, and that many of them had doubts about it. Let's go over your examples, shall we?
Jefferson: An Anti-Federalist, the party originally in opposition to the Constitution - and which only agreed to the Constitution on the condition that the Bill of Rights be added.
Lincoln: A Republican, engaged in Constitutionally questionable activities to keep the United Stated, United. Article One, Section Ten of the Constitution has a list of things that the States are not allowed to do. It is the only part of the Constitution that places limits upon the powers of the individual states. Secession is not on the list of powers prohibited to the states. Its important to remember that the South seceded because of state's rights and slavery (Confederate Constitution), and Lincoln contested the issue because he didn't want the Union to break apart (which is why the Emancipation Proclamation is kind of a joke - It only applied to the seceding states, which Lincoln had absolutely no control over at the time it was written).
Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, instituted the draft to fight WWI, and afterwards fought with the Senate to join the League of Nations, the the even less effective precursor to the absolutely corrupt and ineffective UN.
FDR takes the cake, so I'll summarize: Social Security, Medicare, the rest of the New Deal, the draft during WWII. There is a reason why, after he died, the 22nd amendment was easily passed and ratified. He stacked the Supreme Court so that they would rule in his favor. He was elected for an unprecedented four terms and gained so much power that when he died, everyone else took immediate action to ensure no one could gain that much power ever again.
In conclusion, one of the examples took care of his objections to the constitution by amending it, one of them abused his power to hold the Union together, and two of them violated the Constitution for personal power. The Constitution didn't cover everything, but it's nice to know that when abuse of power happens, it is a violation of the Constitution.

To be clear, I don't think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago.

 Just propose amendments, like everyone else.

Unfortunately, the Constitution also contains some provisions that are not so inspiring. For example, one allows a presidential candidate who is rejected by a majority of the American people to assume office. Suppose that Barack Obama really wasn't a natural-born citizen. So what?

There is a reason for that one. If Obama isn't a natural-born citizen, he will no doubt have sympathies for his place of birth, which, if his place of birth is hostile to the US, could very well lead to the US getting walloped because of the Chief Executive's sympathies.

Constitutional obedience has a pernicious impact on our political culture. Take the recent debate about gun control. None of my friends can believe it, but I happen to be skeptical of most forms of gun control.
I understand, though, that's not everyone's view, and I'm eager to talk with people who disagree.

That's good.

But what happens when the issue gets Constitutional-ized? Then we turn the question over to lawyers, and lawyers do with it what lawyers do. So instead of talking about whether gun control makes sense in our country, we talk about what people thought of it two centuries ago.

What they thought about it two centuries ago was that it is a necessary right for us to remain a free people, and therefore required protection (at least, the Anti-Federalists thought it needed protection - Turns out, they were right) .

Worse yet, talking about gun control in terms of constitutional obligation needlessly raises the temperature of political discussion. Instead of a question on policy, about which reasonable people can disagree, it becomes a test of one's commitment to our foundational document and, so, to America itself.

It provides an extra layer of protection to an absolutely necessary right. I'll take a guarantee of a right over rationality in a discussion.

This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today.

They might not know anything of our country as it currently exists, but they don't rule our country so it doesn't matter. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, but in the end, its all about limiting the power of those who rule, not ruling our nation.

If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.

 An ancient and outdated document that protects your rights and limits the powers of government so that it can't take them away.

My Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Some treaties are so bad, that it would be almost impossible to get out of them. So how do you get out of them (if they are ratified in the future)?

With an amendment that makes it possible to get out of any treaty no matter what, that's how.

Anyway, on to what I would like to see in an amendment to the constitution (I even made it readable, I hope).