I wonder what percent of US laws have never been tested, i.e., are unexercised codepaths.
A prominent example lately is that the Presidential pardoning powers don’t extend to impeachment—therefore they cannot pardon themselves or those implicated—but this hasn’t ever come up.
Conversation
I was talking about this to my house mate (law student). Kinda crazy that lawmakers are essentially 'testing things in prod' every day, using this highly dynamic, fuzzily interpreted logic language called 'the law'.
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He was saying that (in Australia) thankfully it is compensated for by systems like judicial discretion. It's important to have some leeway when people's lives are in the balance.
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Yeah, the US is similar—the less formal business of legal precedents and judicial opinions to inform arguments and rulings makes things more resilient, which seems to work fine for things like civil, family, and contract law, but criminal law is completely fucked up.
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Unfortunately something like 90% of criminal cases are decided by plea bargaining, because there simply aren’t enough legal resources to take everything to trial, especially not for people who can’t afford counsel and must rely on an overexerted, apathetic public defender.
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