Laws for the People

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Information: Failures of American Methods of Lawmaking in Historical and Comparative Perspectives , pp. vii - viii

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108182195 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2018

Laws for the People

The laws are not made for the lawyers but for the people.

American Law Journal (1813)

The laws are not – we mean they ought not to be – written for the lawyers, but for the people.

American Themis (1844)

Though our [government] claims to be a democratic government, our statutes are addressed to lawyers and not to the people; a layman can hardly be expected to understand their phraseology. The principal German statutes, particularly the civil code, are published in cheap, popular and handy editions, and are found in hundreds of thousands of homes. The extraordinary sense of legality of the German people is not entirely unconnected with the intelligibility of their laws.

Special Committee on Drafting of Legislation, American Bar Association (1914)

Our legal system has become extremely difficult to understand for ordinary citizens, even for smart lawyers.

Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr. (2014)

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Laws for the People

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