What is this law called?

[Hector Medina]

Hey ya,

There is a law that when something is ratified in the constitution it must be evaluated or something like that.
e.g. A law is ratified stating that we can only wear pants.
In order for this law to go into effect:
The type of pants must be stated
The color of pants must be stated
The places and times that regard to wearing them.
The penetalies for no waering them must stated


If I understand correctly there are a lot of laws that are ratified but not evaluted like this therefore we don't have to do them.


Who knows about this?

-Hector

 

[Morat]

  There is a general requirement that laws be specific. If I remember correctly, this is based upon the notion of equal rights under the law.

   If a law is really vague, then police or local governments can get away with applying it one way to Group X, and another way to Group Y.

 

 

[Brimshack]

I am not aware of any law that says a constitutional amendment needs to go through such a proceure AFTTER t is ratified, and if such a law did exist it would need to be in the Constitution itself, since the Constitution does say what the procedures are for Amending it. To narrow that through legislation alone would not work.

I think what you may be referring to is the last stage in the committtee process wherein a given law (including proposed amendments) goes through the rules committee, and they will try and examine all the relevant technical issues before submitting their own recommendation to the COW (committee of the whole) in any given legislative branch. But this would occur BEFORE any actual vote, and so apply to part of the process of ratification, not afterwards. This is pretty standard, and it's intended to avoid conteradictory or vague legislation. Whether or not its done well depends of course on the people in the rules committees. So, anyway, if you are looking for the source of the rule that mandates this it would be in the internal regulations for each branch of Congress, as authorized under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

There are some direct democracy procedures which omit this. Here in Arizona, for instance, a citizen can file an Initiative petition to Amend the state constitution, and if she gets enough signatures (if I remember right; a number = 15% of those voting in the last goober-natorial election - pun intended), it goes up for general election. A simple majority would then make the initiative into a law. Since this procedure would bypass the legislative process it does not have to go through the rules committee, and it would become law no matter how poorly worded, or even if it directly contradicted other parts of the state constitution. But that's Arizona; the Federal constitution is another matter.