Vis Lupi Est Grex

I'm Sorry Officer, I Didn't Know It Was the Law

Because this was too good to pass up, a comment was necessary.

"Watcher" over at the Sagebrush's website has commented on the story about the perennial impeach-the-ASUN-president saga. Aside from the attacks made on Mr. Tim Taycher and Mr. Michael Cabrera, candidates for the Senate and the ASUN presidency, respectively, "Watcher" makes one comment in defense of Mr. Reilly that is very disturbing.

Last year was such a dog-and-pony show of random laws that were never communicated properly (that includes the new constitution) that it’s impossible for even Staff to get things right.

(emphasis added). Watcher appears to need a lesson on how law works.

Legislatures communicate their acts (no coincidence that they are called "Acts") by publication. The Senate does not (usually) call up the president and tell him that "there's this law thing, and let us read it to you, oh, and you have to do it."

Using ASUN's framework...

Bills--or written measures proposed to do something--are introduced in the Senate to be debated and acted upon. Often the measures go to committee for study. If a majority of the Senate agrees something should be done, they pass the bill. At each step, the bill is printed (or published). The meetings are required by Nevada law (NRS 241 et seq.) to be open. It is no secret, to the careful observer, what the Senate is up to.

So let's say the Senate passes a bill. The Senate agrees on a policy. Before the bill becomes law, it must be presented to the ASUN president for action. How does presentment occur? The Senate's secretary creates what is called an enrolled bill. It contains the exact text of the bill that passed the Senate, incorporating any amendments that the Senate may have agreed to before passing the bill. That single, printed, enrolled bill is presented, physically, to the president.

Because this is all done in writing, the president knows exactly what it is that the Senate has passed. If he signs it, boom, it is now a law. If he waits too long to sign it after being presented with it, barring intervening events, boom, the bill (now called an Act) becomes law. If he vetoes it, it does not become a law, unless the Senate overrides the veto. In any event, the single printed enrolled bill is preserved as proof of the law.

Okay, so the President who is presented with legislation presumably knows the law (assuming he reads it), but what about everybody else? Having a single copy of the bill isn't very convenient when trying to find out what the law is. That's where something called promulgation comes into play.

A law is promulgated when it is published. Again, that means having it printed and made available for public inspection. At the Nevada state level, several provisions of law govern the promulgation of legislative measures (NRS 218.460 through 218.520, inclusive). In ASUN, a law sets out a similar process (ASUN Public Law 75-39).

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/ That website contains the codified general and permanent laws of the State of Nevada (a codified law means that it has been rearranged by subject matter to make things easier to find). All of them. Lots of them. Just peruse through the table of contents sometime. ASUN does not have much codified law like Nevada does. Instead, most of the laws stand alone. They are session laws. Nevada has the same thing. They are called session laws, too (for the laws that are passed in a single session of the legislature). In Nevada, the session laws are published in the Statutes of Nevada (linky). It should look similar to ASUN's version. ASUN has the same thing as the Statutes of Nevada: It's called the Associated Students Statutes at Large (linky).

Now, how does one know what the law is, or learn what the law is? One reads the law. The Senate does not hand-hold and coddle the executive or judiciary. It communicated its laws already. It published them. What makes the communication point even more absurd, that the "laws...were never communicated properly," is that all of these laws were prepared and placed on ASUN's very own website.

I think what "Watcher" is pointing out is a more fundamental problem than "communication." The problem is not with communication, it is with knowing that communication already occurred. It isn't up to the senators to hold the president's hand (or the staff's hands, for that matter). It is for the president and the staff to READ THE LAW.

When you get pulled over in your vehicle for failing to signal when changing lanes, you don't raise as a defense that the state legislature never communicated that law to you, do you? Ignorance of the law is not a defense.

The problem here is not with secret, poorly communicated laws. It's with not reading them, or becoming acquainted with them, in the first place.

So what "Watcher" calls "a dog-and-pony show of random laws" being enacted, I call it doing what the legislative branch is supposed to do: legislate. The whole point of having written laws is so they aren't forgotten. The whole point of having laws is so conduct can be guided.

I guess Mr. Reilly was not fully in tune to the fact that the oath he took (published in the Constitution) was to "faithfully execute the office of President of the Associated Students," and part of faithfully executing his office is "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." All of that is in the ASUN Constitution (again, published).

But I keep forgetting, this is all just a $1.5 million plaything.