Charles Cooke‘s fascinating conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in the latest print edition of National Review contains the following blurb. It should interest anyone who has been following North Carolina’s discussion of overcriminalization.
When this delegation of power is combined with laws that are sufficiently vague as to permit those agencies to fill in the blanks, and with a judiciary that is overly deferential to that blank-filling, the threat to liberty becomes obvious — especially when the rules change so frequently that it is hard for even the most diligent citizens to comply. “Madison recognized that if you don’t have written law, that’s an invitation to tyranny,” Gorsuch tells me. “The law is just whatever the king wants. If you have too much written law, you have a similar problem: a paper blizzard, so that nobody can be sure what their rights are. I wonder if, sometimes, we may be getting there.” [Emphasis added.]
One suspects participants in a recent criminal law reform summit might echo Gorsuch’s concerns.
