Bill to make legislation more transparent, easier to understand

This is my congressman. Here's why he's interesting:<p>He doesn't miss any votes, and he explains every single vote (even boring, inconsequential votes) on his Facebook page:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash</a><p>Here's an example of a boring explanation:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/512913978748013" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/51291397874801...</a><p>Here's a longer explanation:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/512465805459497" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/51246580545949...</a>

Legislatures run mainly on norms and customs. As people have pointed out already, no legislature can bind a future version of itself (which is why the 60-vote filibuster is unconstitutional, but I digress).<p>Congress could establish better customs, of course. It is customary in many nations to limit legislation to a single topic and to codify the laws on a single topic in a single published Act. For example, virtually all of the important laws relating to, say, education, might be published in an Education Act, and from time to time, a legislature would enact a new version of it, replacing the old version entirely.<p>This tends to make reading up on the laws (and proposed laws) much easier, and it also makes super-specific tax breaks for individual companies and things like that really stand out.<p>The U.S. custom of publishing bills as a list of "replace "and" in line 76422 with "or"" statements is a really poor legislative custom.

Bills are a lot easier to understand if you think of them as source code diffs. This bill is basically requiring them to provide context diffs which is actually a pretty decent idea.

Some people, when they find legislation hard to understand, think "I know, let's legislate to make legislation easier to understand." Now they have two problems.

The Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress <i>already does this</i>. In fact, it's what this particular agency was created to do.<p>Maybe Rep. Amash should spend more time learning about existing resources and less time passing redundant laws?

Slightly off topic, but this reminds me of a great talk on simplifying legislation so that law people can actually read and understand it:<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_siegel_let_s_simplify_legal_jargon.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_siegel_let_s_simplify_legal_ja...</a><p>In the talk, Alan discusses how they simplified a non-trivial set of legislation to something more like an advertising brochure. They then confirmed with appropriate lawyers that it was equivalent to the original legislation.<p>I would love to see a NPO or volunteer group spring up, comprised of marketers and lawyers, who retroactively applied this technique to existing laws, then published them freely.

Isn't this more the arena of a procedural than federal law? This definitely seems more feel good than reality. I believe the court precedent is called "legislative entrenchment"[1] which seems to prevent Congress from passing these laws that "bind" future Congresses.<p>So, to answer the Representative's question, it would appear that courts would hold this bill unconstitutional.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/essay/legislative-entrenchment:-a-reappraisal/" rel="nofollow">http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/essay/leg...</a>

Minor point: Absent a constitutional amendment, I don't think the bill would be legally binding (it could, of course, establish a social norm within the Congress, enforceable by peer pressure).<p>Suppose that a senator or representative were to introduce a bill that didn't conform to the diff requirement. Suppose also that both houses passed the bill, and the president signed it. I don't think anyone would argue that the bill hadn't become law.

Love love love this! It is precisely the kind of ideology-agnostic change that needs to start happening! Most of us argue politics in a state of almost complete ignorance. Politicians take office not knowing the first thing about the actual job itself. Ideology is a preoccupation, governing is an occupation.

The bill should also include the fact that you can't add stuff to the bill that have nothing to do with the main topic of the bill. This happens far too often - like putting indefinite detention clauses in budget bills, and so on.

If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it.<p>If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Congress can send it to me in 500 pieces, which I can veto individually.