Today’s Congress is the least productive in the nation’s history. At least, so claims a soon-to-be published paper by Rosanna Kim ‘13.
Kim’s work, which analyzes the 112th Congress using a model of legislative productivity designed by political scientist Sarah Binder, will be published later this year in The Fellows Review. Kim completed the research while working last year as a Fellow for the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC).
via Worst Congress Ever? Ask Rosanna Kim | Daily Gazette.
What a horror story we live in. It is bad enough we have an committee that meets regularly that justifies its existence by the passage of new laws. Now, they are actually criticized if they don’t pass more faster.
And why is there gridlock? Because there are many people, or a significant minority that opposes the law. What kind of democracy are we going to have if it is considered a problem when Congress doesn’t violate the will of the people?
Israel never had a legislature. Nor did Rome, truth be told. The English Common Law developed without a legislature. In fact, if England had always had Parliament it would never “common law” would never have come into existence.
The law is supposed to be the application of ethical principles to situations. It develops by court processes. It evolves naturally in a society (at least to the extent that the society has a known ethical code that is shared by the members of that society–maybe that helps explain the demand for “legislative productivity”).
Legislatures are interventionists in this natural process in society. They wreck it.
I realize that, due to our political circumstances and the nine rulers of the US known as the Supreme Court, that American conservatives have come to oppose “judge made law.” But, in general, judge-made law is far preferable to legislatures.
For further reading, I highly recommend Freedom and the Law by Bruno Leoni. It is by no means a Christian book, but it is of great value to Christians and will help them understand ancient Israel and how law is supposed to develop far better than many other Christian works.
You can read it online here.
Cross posted at Christendom Unbound<>
