A Topic For New Law Students.

"CC" = community college.

 

Well, just to round off this thread. My questions were of a general nature. Not just sex laws, but all the laws that written so, like in the book "Catch 22", everyone could be or was guilty of them, and not know. I was talking to that lady cop at my precinct about 20 years ago. And even she didn't know how the statute about pepper spray was written at the time in MI. And she's was a cop. And they have their own source to refer to for information on statutes. Most people don't. Especially if their poor or intellectually impaired.

No, everyone here, everyone on the boards, everyone indeed, even those without access to the knowledge I have, needs to be informed about these unknown laws. I know about them. But I am going make it my mission to inform everyone everywhere about every existing statute. So people don't get in trouble like Linda Tripp, just because they didn't know the law or because the guy at the spy shop lied about her.

I'm going tell everyone everything I know. That will be my mission now as I said. And I hope other members on these boards and elsewhere will join me in this .

 

I was also going to say, on the psychodrama novel "Catch 22". I should probably put this in the Literature section. I've never read it. But I know the story. That's called preëmption. And we might see it in taking a crime that is associated with a certain group or class. Like in the 90's the federal statute against crack cocaine possession, made private possession punishable by a minimum of 5 years. Because that is the kind of crime that would be associated with African American youths. Rich white people at the time would be more likely to use powder cocaine. The story behind that that law is that the GOP lawmakers based it on one story they heard in the news. That would then more correctly be what Oliver Wendell Holmes called a hard case. "Hard cases make bad law" he once said. But most people believed the crack statute was targeting African American youth.

Actually drug laws in general seem suspect to me. I never did drugs and I used to support the drug laws. They all started in the 19th century with the opium war in the US, which was actually more about Chinese immigrants than drugs. And now they seem to mainly target people with poor impulse control. And young people. And the poor. Not because they use drugs more, the poor. But because those laws are more strictly enforced in poor areas. And they are more likely to be arrested and not be able to hire a good lawyer. I find that topic, the book i.e., interesting as I said. Maybe I will start a new thread on it.

 

A worthy project, but don't get too frustrated when it seems overwhelming. Sometimes even the folks passing these laws aren't aware of what's in them.

 

i just googled the topic "disproportionate impact of criminal laws on the poor" and came up with, I kid you not, "about one million search results". Here are ten you might find interesting.
Poverty Penalties as Human Rights Problems | American Journal of International Law | Cambridge Core.
Criminalization of Poverty as a Driver of Poverty in the United States
Incomparable Punishments: How Economic Inequality Contributes to the Disparate Impact of Legal Fines and Fees
disproportionate impact of criminal law on the poor - Yahoo Video Search Results
Blacks disproportionately targeted by US justice system – DW – 06/20/2020
Racist Drug Laws Lead to Racist Enforcement in Cities Across the Country | ACLU
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System
Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs
Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs
Do Current Drug Laws and Policies Discriminate Against Minorities and Women? | ACLU | ProCon.org