> If it applied equally to everyone, then more people would be outraged as it affected them.

In order to do this you need to have laws that are designed to be reasonable for people to actually follow instead of laws that are designed to allow prosecutors to find a violation whenever they want to.

Actually enforcing them would create pressure to do that, but it would also create pressure to go back to selective enforcement when powerful people object to being subjected to the unreasonableness of existing laws.

A better solution might be to make a showing of selective enforcement a means to strike down a law. If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged then the prosecution either has to charge them too or that law is struck down and no one can be charged with it anymore.

Then instead of the incentive not to charge powerful people creating pressure for selective enforcement, the same incentive creates pressure to strike down the laws that can't reasonably be uniformly enforced.

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anthonyrstevens 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>> A better solution might be to make a showing of selective enforcement a means to strike down a law. If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged then the prosecution either has to charge them too or that law is repealed and no one can be charged with it anymore.

This is very interesting. I suspect there are a lot of unintended consequences that might follow.

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JackFr 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Congress (and state legislatures) pass laws, but don’t necessarily authorize the resources to prosecute all offenders, so prosecutors are given some latitude who to target.

IANAL, but my understanding is this: Malicious prosecution is a defense. Selective enforcement is not. The difference is for judges and juries to decide.

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AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you're going to say things like that you have to give examples.

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j16sdiz 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is basically asking for discovery of another case when you are being suing for one case.

I think the US court system is famous for being slow. Not sure if anyone wants to make it go even slower.

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salawat 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You just created a large, TBTF corp's veto. Pass a law or have a law passed a corp TBTF doesn't want? Break it and force the Government's hand to strike it down.

	▲	john01dav 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Ideally what would happen is the corporation starts having enforcement action against it and then its leadership is forced out to rescue said corporation from failing. This certainly seems better than just making TBTF (which I assume means too big to fail) entities be above the law.
	▲	AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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skinfaxi 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think part of the balance is that law requires discretion because humans are not good at making deny lists which the law boils down to.

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AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's just conceding that you don't actually want to have laws and really only want to punish people when you don't like them.

	▲	skinfaxi 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's pretty reductive. Or do you not see a difference for example between someone speeding to get to the hospital vs speeding to elude police after a bank robbery?

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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giantg2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"If you can show that someone else was doing the same thing without being charged"

It's unlikely people would have enough evidence of high enough quality to make that case. The prosecution will just say the evidence isn't enough.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The prosecution can say whatever they want, but the worst of the existing laws are the one that are pretty easy to prove, and it's the court rather than the prosecution who makes the decision. You'll also get some nice incentives where the government will be arguing that a particular behavior is not a violation of the law so they don't have to charge someone they don't want to, which in turn leaves you with that precedent if the judge agrees with them and then they want to charge someone else for doing that later.

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_DeadFred_ 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Our system has that built in. You can only be punished as to the norm and standards, findings can create precedent for other cases, etc. The workaround is they just use an 'as applied standard' so that it only can 'apply' to the one case due to that case's unique 'circumstances'. They do it all the time to prevent precedents from being set. 'As applied' rules are excluded from setting precedent.

As applied needs to be changed so that it can be included in setting precedent and when considering the norms given out for punishment because right now it's highly abused to prevent establishing legal norms from judicial findings the way our system is supposed to.

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mc32 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In fact most people are okay with selectively stretching time limits and elevating a low class misdemeanor into a felony in order to prosecute someone where the party who would be the injured party said there was no injury.

And lest people think this is a one way street, each side thinks the other deserves interpreting the law to “get the real baddies.”