Laws are written to define who the criminal is.
But can a law itself be a crime?
There are many current financial legislatures that are now on the books and their purpose is only to rob and steal. But probably the easier examples of when law itself is a crime is the laws of countries under totalitarian governments.
But does democracy as such and the "democratic process" give us a definitive protection, that laws themselves are not a crime?
Discuss.
Dear
anotherlife
If there is something unjust, unlawful or discriminatory with a law, then passing it, enforcing it or abusing govt to pass or enforce it can be argued as THAT person or group responsible for passing/enforcing it "conspiring to violate civil rights" which is a felony.
However this argument has not been used against govt officials largely because of govt immunity
Now if you want to say govt immunity is unlawful, or the whole judicial branch of govt is Unconstitutional because it serves to establish beliefs or biases that violate equal religious freedom and exercise of dissenters forced to comply against their beliefs, that is close to what you are saying, and pointing out on principle the entire policy or practice is criminal by a collective conspiracy or system to violate civil rights of individuals.
But still to argue this point requires naming a specific act, case or person/group committing a wrong in order to petition or sue in real life
You can argue abstractly in order to sway the public, but still require an exact act or agent to argue a real case in practice
Note: you can argue that's what's wrong with the legal system. It doesn't protect the equal right of all people to redress grievances, prevent or correct abuses, but only works for people with resources or leverage to hire lawyers to win. So yes I have argued the whole legal system is Unconstitutional or unlawful. Mediation would protect all interests equally but we don't offer equal access to that so people are not equally protected under law.
To correct this system takes resolving conflicts case by case to build support for consensus.
And in that consensus building process, any other flaws in the laws and system can find correction as well.
My advice to you is take it case by case, address each wrong specifically and this will lead to correcting all wrongs collectively.
If the solution is only in case by case practice, then nothing can match the power of sweeping new laws day by day.
For example, American law is just, relatively to most European laws, but is made to fall silent when it has to protect Americans against Europeans. Case example could be any of the huge financial law suits against Microsoft, Google, Apple, and so on, that the Europeans rage onto them in spite of American protection. The criminality of European laws is thereby upheld, and that should be addressed but case law would never have the power.
Another case law could be the marriage based immigration in the USA, where fiancée visas are now newly unlawful, unless the inviting citizen partner can prove that he started the relationship by full criminal disclosure. But how can a relationship start when the first word is an excuse about being a criminal? Such laws would fit the problem, but case law has no power for them.
Dear
anotherlife
With American govt, much of these overreaching and unjust laws could be prevented
by adhering to Constitutional limits on govt authority in the first place.
For laws to be binding social contracts they must carry authority of Consent of the Governed.
So this whole business of pushing laws by political bullying by coercion or exclusion
SKEWS the representation and the way laws are written and creates these huge problems.
If we listened to the objections, and resolved the problems behind the complaints,
we could correct problems with the laws or find better ways to address the issues,
instead of railroading laws over the objections of dissenters and fighting to fix it later.
For laws to be constitutional they not only have to
follow the process and meet the restrictions and requirements
of what each branch is authorized to do, but also respect
the other Constitutionally protected principles of:
free exercise of religion and neither prohibiting nor establishing a
faith based belief or favoring or penalizing people of one creed over another
due process of laws
not depriving citizens of liberty unless convicted of a crime
equal protection of laws
as well as basic principles of
no taxation without representation
respect for rights reserved to people and states
no ethical conflicts of interest with private or political biases
interfering with the neutral equal and inclusive duty to the public universally.
See Code of Ethics for Govt Service
www.ethics-commission.net
Most violations and abuses can be attributed to abridging
one or more of the basic principles in the Bill of Rights,
Code of Ethics, or the general Fourteenth Amendment
protecting rights of citizens equally under govt jurisdiction.
The problem with bad laws
anotherlife is
they have flaws or biases that violate these
Constitutional principles standards and ethics.
So if we enforced these standards in the first place
we would not end up with bad laws due to
political compromises and conflicts of interest.
