No Unjust Exceptions

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Proposal:

If the legislative branch is prohibited from enacting a law that includes an unjust exception. If such a law containing an unjust exception is successfully challenged in court, the court may strike the unjust exception from the law without overturning the entire law.

The executive branch is prohibited from selectively enforcing a law to create an unfair advantage or disadvantage for a definable group of people. If such unjust enforcement of the law is successfully challenged in court, the court may order restitution for people disadvantaged by the unjust enforcement and may order any elected or appointed executives responsible for the unjust enforcement to vacate their office for violating their oath of office and cause a new election or temporary appointment, and may order any government employee who was responsible for the unjust enforcement to be suspended without pay for up to one year or to be separated from government service.

Intent:

If the legislature enacts such a law, any citizen has standing to challenge it due to the violation of the right to equal opportunity. If a law does not include an exception but the executive branch enforces it selectively and with unfair advantage or disadvantage to some groups, any citizen has standing to challenge it due to the violation of the right to equal opportunity.

If a law with an unjust exception is successfully challenged in court, the judge may strike the exception from the law without overturning the entire law. This protects the will of the people by keeping the law while protecting the body of the people by removing the part that is unconstitutional.

If unjust enforcement of a law is successfully challenged in court, the judge may order the government to pay restitution to people who were unjustly disadvantaged by the selective enforcement, while also preventing future abuse by removing people from their positions.

Since anyone has standing to sue for a violation of rights, the people who receive the restitution may not be the same as the people suing. Only people demonstrably harmed by the government’s action or inaction may receive restitution. However, a court may find an unjust exception is written into a law and strike it even if there are no victims. This allows unconstitutional laws to be challenged before they harm someone.

The court may not imprison or fine individual legislators or executives because that would make this proposal into a weapon. The remedies provided here are sufficient: Restitution for victims, striking the unconstitutional part of a law even before anyone is harmed by it, and removal of executive branch officials or employees who failed to uphold their oath of office.

Discussion:

Some laws by nature apply only to specific circumstances, such as laws governing air travel obviously don’t apply to pedestrians. However, when a law is written to create an advantage or disadvantage for one group over another, it is unjust. For example, if a law governing air travel is written to apply only to companies headquartered on the west coast instead of on the east coast without any justifiable basis for that selection, it is reasonable to infer that the law was written specifically to advantage one group and that it is unjust. Alternatively, if the law was written to apply uniformly to all airlines, but the executive branch only enforces it on some airlines but not others, that unequal application of the law is unjust.

An example of this is the Affordable Care Act of 2010. It was written to apply to the general population, but it was not enforced for legislators. In the legal system of the United States, it’s difficult for any citizen to show that they were specifically harmed by this failure to enforce the law. Any corruption of under $3 million, divided by the number of people in the country, would work out to less than $0.01 per individual. This is why it’s important to create rules that allow injustice to be challenged, because no amount of injustice is tolerable.

[Author]

Posts