Codification.......................

   Forgetting to mind my own business, I find myself now on a committee charged with reviewing, and improving  - if possible, our town's property maintenance code.  Yikes, that'll learn me.  While reading the document, it gradually dawned on me that probably 94% of all property owners in Newark, me included, are, willfully or otherwise, violating said code.  At the last committee meeting, I mentioned that it was probably a mistake to create laws that casually make lawbreakers out of most of the citizenry.  The legal mind at the table suggested there are many rules for the breakage of which there is no enforcement or penalty, i. e. driving 57 miles per hour when the posted speed limit is 55, and that was just the natural order of things.  I was suitably chastened and temporarily silenced - but still feeling a bit of rebellion towards the idea. A thicket of government imposed rules and regulations for which there is no enforcement or penalty must certainly weaken the legitimacy of those more critical and important laws.  A government, whose foundation is based on the consent of the governed, delves into minutiae at its own risk.
     Friend Kurt catches the feeling with his posts (here and here) on "the codification of life."  Quoting Kurt quoting Aristotle, "Ideally, there should be few laws, seldom changed."
      Not sure what the outcome of our committee's work will be, but  I do know that an attempt will be made to de-criminalize at least 94% of the property owners in Newark.