Does each country have a book/library of the laws of the land that a commoner can consult to check if they're about to do something illegal?

Submitted ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨58008@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

For example, is there a ‘laws dot gov’ kinda URL I can go to and type “importing raccoons to Northern Ireland to create a self-sustaining population” into the search bar?

Or maybe something like a multi-volume book series I can check at the library to see if “raccoon husbandry; N. Ireland” is mentioned?

Maybe an AI chatbot on the local council’s website that I can ask “is it legal to raise baby raccoons by feeding them from miniature wheelie bins to teach them where food comes from and how to open the lids”?

I’m not about to do anything [potentially] illegal, I’m just curious.

Cheers! 🦝

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

framsanon@europe.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Germany has a website containing all its statutes: www.gesetze-im-internet.de However, even Germans have difficulty understanding some of the paragraphs, as they are written in bureaucratic and legal language. Have fun!

source
zxqwas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I know there is a website either government or privately maintained with a reasonably recent law text.

I’m sure the library could lend me a copy of the laws if I asked.

source
gole@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Korea: literally that law.go.kr

source
- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  That twitch streamer should’ve read this before traveling to SK
  
  (Not naming the dude, y’all know the one)
  
  source
gustofwind@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not sure why people are saying the laws aren’t accessible in America

Here’s the entire federal code of laws

www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text

Here’s the federal rules and regulations

www.ecfr.gov

Here’s a repository of every state’s laws

law.justia.com/codes/

source
- SlurpingPus@lemmy.world ⁨38⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  ‘Don’t Talk to the Police’ has a good section about that. Not only there are ten thousand laws, but US laws incorporate foreign laws by reference.
  
  source
- dgdft@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You’re not wrong that most statutory legislation is freely and readily available, but determining if an act is illegal in a practical sense requires looking at case law too.
  
  Depending on what domain we’re talking about, technical legislation often references paywalled documents too. E.g., I work in biomed R&D, and the FDA regulations for medical devices are often tied to pay-to-play ISO standards.
  
  source
  - gustofwind@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    yeah nothing should be paywalled and westlaw/lexis/bloomberg/all of them should be a public service in fact
    
    This is actually something I think ai will basically solve. Well, not the law as a public service part but the general access to reliable legal information part. I’ve seen the westlaw and lexis lawyer bots and they’re pretty good, a non lawyer could easily rely on it because lawyers already do.
    
    I can’t imagine it takes more than 5 years before we see tailored compliance bots in various fields. AI mediated society is already here
    
    source
- Triumph@fedia.io ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yes, they're there. Good luck finding what you want to find.
  
  source
  - gustofwind@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    lawyers use Google before anything else. If you’re wondering if what you’re doing is illegal you probably can just look it up and find a decent enough answer
    
    source
captaindeank@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
In the US, no. This is why lawyers get paid so much money to research and analyze whether their clients’ activities may or may not be legal. For many areas of the law, relevant statutes, regulations, and agency interpretations are publicly available and may be compiled and discussed at a high level in a treatise. However, a specific question or set of facts (such as raccoon husbandry in a specific location) would require research or analysis beyond what a treatise might describe. And treatises are expensive, full of legal jargon, and usually not publicly available. Welcome to the Law!

source
- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Isn’t that partly because the US has like 52 sets of law (50 states, DC, Fed) and maybe more (County/Parish, etc)?
  
  source
  - compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yep. But when two laws are in conflict, the higher law wins. So state laws supersede local laws, and federal laws beat state laws. Of course, there is also weirdness where the higher body might just choose not to argue with the lower body over conflicting laws, like with cannabis legalization.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“Oh… It’s not illegal? Maaaaan… Now I gotta figure out something else to do this Saturday. 😮‍💨”

source
- Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Or:
  
  “they forgot to make this illegal? Really?diabolical laughter” “Are you ready? from ‘friends on the other side’ starts playing”
  
  source
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
From the article on Public.Resource.Org:

Malamud called for increased awareness that Westlaw was a commercial broker of the United States Federal Reporter, Federal Supplement, and Federal Appendix. While Westlaw had been adding value to the content by indexing it with their proprietary West American Digest System and accompanying summaries, the purchase of their products was the only way to access much of the public domain material they hosted.

source
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
www.legislation.gov.uk - For the UK.

source
Tuuktuuk@piefed.ee ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I would be surprised if there was a country that don’t have their all laws set in the paper form.

But, regarding Finland: You’re thinking of http://finlex.fi .

There’s for example this gem, telling about how you should take care of the hops trellis the law requires you to maintain! :)
(Please don’t tell anyone, but I do not actually have a hops trellis! I’m breaking the law.)
It’s also helpful if you want to know how to let your pigs to run in an acorn forest. Or if your bees escape and land inside someone else’s tree.

Also, the beginning words of our Criminal Code are a bit, well, outdated? Here goes: https://www.finlex.fi/en/legislation/1889/39-001?language=swe&highlightId=798156&highlightParams=%7B%22type%22%3A%22BASIC%22%2C%22search%22%3A%22rikoslaki%22%7D

(I’m linking the Swedish-language versions because I believe a machine translator does a better job translating to European languages from Swedish than from Finnish)

source
- Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  I would be surprised if there was a country that don’t have their all laws set in the paper form.
  
  The anglosaxon school of law is more case-based than build on written law like e.g. in continental Europe.
  
  source
- Hjalamanger@feddit.nu ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This is amazing. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew that you still had the old Criminal Code left, but never had I read it. Here in Sweden we have since swapped that one for a hopefully less outdated law. Here is a English translation for those interested:
  
  We Alexander the Third, by the Grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of all Russia, Tsar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., etc., do hereby solemnly declare: At the submissive request of the Estates of Finland, We hereby ratify the following penal code for the Grand Duchy of Finland, concerning the introduction of which, as also concerning the execution of punishment, a special decree is issued:
  
  (That’s a machine translation, I couldn’t be bothered to do it myself. But I must say I’m impressed of how well it handled the very old school Swedish)
  
  Also, regarding the other law, byggningabalken or Rakennuskaari, we apparently removed the really funny section about the mandatory ownership of a hops trellis in 1860 here in Swede. To bad really. But the rest of that law still applies here. Also, on behalf of the Finnish state I would like to charge you a fine of one riksdal for not maintaining your hops trellis the last year.
  
  And finally, in regards to OPs question, in Sweden we have the official government site www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/ and then lagen.nu which is a bit more user friendly
  
  source
  - Hjalamanger@feddit.nu ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I fumbles into a rabbit hole. Both of those laws are from 1736, which I have heard before. But apparently, the trade code from that year is also still in effect. It isn’t nearly as funny (although I didn’t check the Finnish version that thoroughly, so there might be some gems there that I missed) but there are some highlights:
    
    Chapter 14 is titled “About Mercenary” (at least that’s how I interpret “Om legohjon”) but the chapter is left completely empty. They chapter is completely removed in the Finnish version.
    
    Also, there is chapter 3 about what one shall do to receive the right to trade and become a part of the burgher class. Removed in Finland
    
    Finally, you may not use boats, shipyards or aircraft in a pledge (is that correct English?). This is revised in the Finnish version, and the same prohibition doesn’t exist there. This is chapter 10 § 7 for those interested
    
    source
- nocturne@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  In high school I worked at the police station for one summer. There was a huge book that had a ton of laws in it. I remember me and the other kid who worked there would read through it.
  
  source
BootLoop@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I know Canada has the Canadian Criminal Code. My friend had a copy for college and I leafed through it once to read some laws about weapons. It’s all in one big book so it is relatively accessible to find stuff but it obviously doesn’t cover traffic law, provincial, or municipal laws.

source
- Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/
  
  source
- Dalacos@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Bit of a tangent, and also very much IIRC…
  
  In the US saying “sorry” can possibly be construed as evidence towards admission to guilt of the crime, whereas in Canada there’s a “Sorry Clause” of some sort specifically stating that saying that apologizing isn’t necessarily an admission of guilt.
  
  As a Canadian I kinda got a kick out that. I live somewhere many people still thank the bus drivers as they exit the bus.
  
  source
  - charles@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s actually a provincial act, which I find even funnier because it means each province legislated the protection separately. Here’s a few of them:
    
    Ontario - Apology Act (2009) B.C. - Apology Act (2006) Manitoba - The Apology Act (Bill 202) Quebec - Article 2853.1 of the Civil Code of Québec Alberta - section 26(1) of Bill 30 (Evidence Amendment Act (2008))
    
    source
spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
New Zealand here. Yes, public libraries have the many volumes of the legal code in the reference section.

source
- Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  We also have the citizens advice bureau. They will help you make sure you’re within the law and not being taken advantage of.
  
  Love the citizens advice bureau they helped me not get scammed out of a $2000 bond by a cunt of a landlord.
  
  source
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Women: exists

Taliban: “Wait, that’s illegal”

source
RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The UK has www.legislation.gov.uk

It only covers statute law, not common law, but most things are codified by statute today.

source
litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Directly answering the question: no, not every country has such a consolidated library that enumerates all the laws of that country. And for reasons, I suspect no such library could ever exist in any real-life country.

I do like this question, and it warrants further discussion about laws (and rules, and norms), how they’re enacted and enforced, and how different jurisdictions apply the procedural machine that is their body of law.

To start, I will be writing from a California/USA perspective, with side-quests into general Anglo-American concepts. That said, the continental European system of civil law also provides good contrast for how similar yet different the “law” can be. Going further abroad will yield even more distinctions, but I only have so much space in a Lemmy comment.

The first question to examine is: what is the point of having laws? Some valid (and often overlapping) answers:

Laws describe what is/isn’t acceptable to a society, reflecting its moral ideals

Laws incentivize or punish certain activities, in pursuit of public policy

Laws set the terms for how individuals interact with each other, whether in trade or in personal life

Laws establish a procedure machine, so that by turning the crank, the same answer will output consistently

From these various intentions, we might be inclined to think that “the law” should be some sort of all-encompassing tome that necessarily specifies all aspects of human life, not unlike an ISO standard. But that is only one possible way to meet the goals of “the law”. If instead, we had a book of “principles” and those principles were the law, then applying those principles to scenarios would yield similar result. That said, exactly how a principle like “do no harm” is applied to “whether pineapple belongs on pizza” is not as clear-cut as one might want “the law” to be. Indeed, it is precisely the intersection of all these objectives for “the law” that makes it so complicated. And that’s even before we look at unwritten laws.

The next question would be: are all laws written down? In the 21st Century, in most jurisdictions, the grand majority of new laws are recorded as written statutes. But just because it’s written down doesn’t mean it’s very specific. This is the same issue from earlier with having “principles” as law: what exactly does the USA Constitution’s First Amendment mean by “respecting an establishment of religion”, to use an example. But by not micromanaging every single detail of daily life, a document that starts with principles and is then refined by statute law, that’s going to be a lot more flexible over the centuries. For better/worse, the USA Constitution encodes mostly principles and some hard rules, but otherwise leaves a lot of details left for Congress to fill in.

Flexibility is sometimes a benefit for a system of law, although it also opens the door for abuse. For example, I recall a case from the UK many years ago, where crown prosecutors in London had a tough time finding which laws could be used to prosecute a cyclist that injured a pedestrian. As it turned out, because of the way that vehicular laws were passed in the 20th Century, all the laws on “road injuries” basically required the use of an automobile, and so that meant there was a hole in the law, when it came to charging bicyclists. They ended up charging the cyclist with the criminal offense of “furious driving”, which dated back to an 1860s statute, which criminalized operating on the public road with “fury” (aka intense anger).

One could say that the law was abused, because such an old statute shouldn’t be used to apply to modern-day circumstances. That said, the bicycle was invented in the 1820s or 1830s. But one could also say that having a catch-all law is important to make sure the law doesn’t have any holes.

Returning to American law, it’s important to note that when there is non-specific law, it is up to the legislative body to fill those gaps. But for the same flexibility reasons, Congress or the state or tribal legislatures might want to confer some flexibility on how certain laws are applied. They can imbue “discretion” upon an agency (eg USA Department of Commerce) or to a court (eg Superior Court of California). At other times, they write the law so that “good judgement” must be exercised.

As those terms are used, discretion more-or-less means having a free choice, where either is acceptable but try to keep within reasonable guidelines. Whereas “good judgement” means the guidelines are enforced and there’s much less wiggle-room for arbitraryness. And confusingly so, sometimes there’s both a component of discretion and judgment, which usually means Congress really didn’t know what else to write.

Some examples: a District Attorney anywhere in California has discretion when it comes to filing criminal charges. They could outright choose to not prosecute person A for bank robbery, but proceed with prosecuting person B for bank robbery, even though they were working together on the same robbery. As an elected official, the DA is supposed to weigh the prospects of actually obtaining a guilty verdict, as well as whether such prosecution would be beneficial to the public or a good use of the DA office’s limited time and budget. Is it a bad look when a DA prosecutes one person but not another? Yes. Are there any guardrails? Yes: a DA cannot abuse their discretion by considering disallowed factors, such as a person’s race or other immutable characteristics. But otherwise, the DA has broad discretion, and ultimately it’s the voters that hold the DA to account.

Another example: the USA Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator is authorized by the federal Clean Air Act to grant a waiver of the supremacy of federal automobile emissions laws, to the state of California. That is to say, federal law on automobile emissions is normally the law of the land and no US State is allowed to write their own laws on automobile emissions. However, because of the smog crisis in the 70/80s, the feds considered that California was a special basket-case and thus needed their own specific laws that were more stringent than federal emissions laws. Thus, California would need to seek a waiver from the EPA to write these more stringent laws, because the blanket rule was “no state can write such laws”. The federal Clean Air Act explicitly says only California can have this waiver, and it must be renewed regularly by the EPA, and that California cannot dip below the federal standards. The final requirement is that the EPA Administrator shall issue the waiver if California requests it, and if they qualify for it.

This means the EPA Administrator does not have discretion, but rather is exercising good judgement: does California’s waiver application satisfy the requirements outlined in the Clean Air Act? If so, the Administrator must issue the waiver. There is no allowance of an “i don’t wanna” reason for non-issuance of the waiver. The Administrator could only refuse if they show that California is somehow trying to do an end-run around the EPA, such as by trying to reduce the standards.

The third question is: do laws encompass all aspects of everything?. No, laws are only what is legally enforced. There are also rules/by-laws and norms. A rule or by-law is often something enforced by something outside the legal system’s purview. For example, the penalty for violating a by-law of the homeowner’s association might be a revocation of access to the common spaces. For a DnD group, the ultimate penalty for violating a rule might be expulsion.

Meanwhile, there are norms which are things that people generally agree on, but felt were so commonplace that breaking the norm would make everything else nonfunctional. For example, there’s a norm that one does not use all-caps lock when writing an online comment, except to represent emphasis or yelling. One could violate that norm with no real repercussions, but everyone else would dislike you for it, they might not want to engage further with you, they might not give you any benefit of the doubt, they may make adverse inferences about you IRL, or other things.

TL;DR: there are unwritten principles that form part of the law, and there’s no way to record all the different non-law rules and social norms that might apply to any particular situation.
source
ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Going to a law library and asking a librarian should help you get information. They get asked oddball questions often so no judgement.

source
notsosure@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Certainly, eg in Germany: recht.bund.de or dejure.org. You can also find it on Amazon

source
- Ephera@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  For Germany, there’s also www.gesetze-im-internet.de/index.html which lists the laws in their current version, similar to dejure, but well, the webpage is actually hosted by our government. It’s as official as you’re gonna get on the internet.
  
  source
Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So generally the national laws are well documented as to what’s a crime and what’s not. Often there’s a website.

Civil vs. Common law jurisdiction matters a fair bit. (As a gross simplification), in a civil law country that text is supposed to be the be-all end-all, judges are supposed to interpret cases based on whether the text of the law was followed or not and use their own discretion on whether past decisions should influence an active case. In common law jurisdictions, precedence from past cases matter a lot, and those decisions are cited by lawyers to say why it should be the same judgment or reasons why this case is different than previous to judge differently.

Then you have sub-national (state, province, prefecture) laws. Those will be well defined but their free availability from an official source online may vary.

Local by-laws will also depend on the location, they have less money so it may not be readily available digitally.

Some governments delegate rulemaking in specific areas, industries or fields to an internal ministry/department, to a professional body (engineers, doctors, lawyers etc.), or an organization (HOA, non profits). They are usually authorized by the law to set, modify, and enforce rules in that specialized area, with a maximum penalty they are permitted to give out for infractions.

So there’s no book of all rules everywhere that can be searched that apply to a specific area.

source
Pamasich@kbin.earth ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Switzerland has Fedlex. For example here's the constitution.

source
6nk06@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
France, here is what I found:

www.legifrance.gouv.fr/…/LEGITEXT000006070721/

source