Excessive accumulation of laws

LII. The obscurity of laws has four sources; viz., 1. An accumulation of laws, especially if mixed with such as are obsolete. 2. An ambiguous description, or want of clear and distinct delivery. 3. A neglect or failure in instituting the method of interpreting justice. 4. And lastly, a clashing and uncertainty of judgments.

LIII. The prophet says, “It shall rain snares upon them”: but there are no worse snares than the snares of laws, especially the penal, which, growing excessive in number, and useless through time, prove not a lantern, but nets to the feet.

LIV. There are two ways in use of making new statutes; the one confirms and strengthens the former statutes in the like cases, at the same time adding or altering some particulars; the other abrogates and cancels all that was enacted before, and instead thereof, substitutes a new uniform law. And the latter method is the best: for in the former the decrees become complicate and perplexed, and though the business be performed, yet the body of laws in the meantime becomes corrupt; but in the latter, greater diligence must be used when the law itself comes to be weighed anew, and what was before enacted to be reconsidered antecedent to its passing; by which means the future agreement and harmony of the laws is well consulted.

LV. It was in use among the Athenians for six persons annually to examine the contradictory titles of their laws, and propose to the people such of them as could not be reconciled, that some certain resolution might be taken about them. According to which example, the legislators of every state should once in three or five years, as it shall seem proper, take a review of these contrarieties in law; but let them first be inspected and prepared by committees appointed for the purpose, and then brought in for the general assembly to fix and establish what shall be approved by vote.

LVI. But let not an overdiligent and scrupulous care be used in reconciling the contradictory titles of laws, by subtile and far-fetched distinctions; for this is the weaving of the wit; and whatever appearance it may have of modesty and reverence, it is to be deemed prejudicial, as rendering the whole body of the laws dissimilar and incoherent. It were, therefore, much better to suppress the worst, and suffer the best to stand alone.

LVII. Obsolete laws, that are grown into disuse, should in the same manner be cancelled. For as an express statute is not regularly abrogated by disuse, it happens that, from a contempt of such as are obsolete, the others also lose part of their authority; whence follows that torture of Mezentius, whereby the living laws are killed in the embraces of the dead ones. But above all things a gangrene in the laws is to be prevented.

LVIII. And let courts of equity have a right of decreeing contrary to obsolete laws and statutes not newly enacted; for although, as is well observed, nobody should be wiser than the laws, yet this should be understood of the laws when they are awake, and not when they sleep. But let it be the privilege, not of judges in the courts of equity, but of kings, solemn councils, and the higher powers, to overrule later statutes found prejudicial to public justice, and to suspend the execution thereof by edicts or public acts, till those meetings are held which have the true power of repealing them, lest otherwise the safety of the people should be endangered.