Letters to the Editor
2025 Nevada Legislature part of new law explosion
“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” This quote is commonly attributed to Mark Twain, but according to Wikipedia it may have originated with a judge in 1866.
Whatever the origin, the judge, and the renowned author — a one-time Nevada resident — are both spinning in their graves.
The 2025 session of the Nevada Legislature has come to a close, but not before producing 518 new laws in 120 days in Carson City. It could have been worse. There were 1,534 bills presented for consideration, and Governor Lombardo vetoed several.
The RJ has reported which representatives had the most success in getting their bills passed. One member got nine out of 10 bills passed, some were 0 for 10.
But maybe we should judge legislator success by something other than how many new laws they pass.
In 1920, ten years after the death of the author who made a jumping frog from just south of Lake Tahoe famous — the entirety of the federal statutes fit into a single volume. By 2018, the U.S. Code had 60,000 pages entombed in 54 volumes.
A recent analysis found that the feds average 344 pieces of legislation each session, amounting to about two to three million words of new federal law. In the 1950s each law averaged two pages — now it’s 18.
Nevada, with 518 new laws makes the U.S. Congress’ 344 seem lame by comparison — and our representatives did it in only 120 days!
It is no wonder that SCOTUS Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his book “Over Ruled,” observes that: “law in our country has simply exploded.”
Compare this explosion of law to what the framers of our Constitution had in mind.
James Madison, who played a leading part in both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, warned of laws becoming “so voluminous that they cannot be read.”
Madison is, no doubt, spinning at a higher RPM than even Twain.
Famed SCOTUS Justice William O. Douglas, wrote that one of the “essential purposes” of our founding documents, “was to take government off the backs of people and keep it off.”
Governor Morris, the author of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, said: “The excess, rather than the deficiency of laws, is to be dreaded most.”
More graveyard spinners.
The subtitle of Justice Gorsuch’s book is: “The Human Toll of Too Much Law.”
How has this happened? How is it that We The People abide this human toll of Too Much Law?
Have Americans changed from a people who cherish the right to “author their own lives,” to people who want every aspect of life controlled by government law, rules, licenses, regulations, dictates and edicts?
I can remember: when bullies were stopped in their tracks by older brothers or cousins rather than handcuffs and mandated therapy; when a child was allowed to operate an unlicensed lemonade stand without inducing panic of public health crisis; when truant students were marched to school an earlobe firmly in the grasp of a caring neighbor or grandparent; when multi-millions of taxpayer dollars weren’t spent to convict a presidential candidate of a victimless bookkeeping error; when masks were the province of Halloween and bandits.
As Mr. Justice Gorsuch notes: “the rule of law is not an end unto itself, it is about protecting individual liberty.” (it) “entails treating humans as persons capable of planning and plotting their future.”
Perhaps we should honor the Nevada representatives who make LESS law — maybe reward them with an ice-cold lemonade…. from a licensed stand of course.
Philip Stanley Bovee
