Fighting Overcriminalization in Federal Regulations

Document overview

Summary

Section 1 . Purpose . The United States is drastically overregulated. The Code of Federal Regulations contains over 48,000 sections, stretching over 175,000 pages—far more than any citizen can possibly read, let alone fully understand. Worse, many carry potential criminal penalties for violations. The situation has become so dire that no one—likely including those charged with enforcing our criminal laws at the Department of Justice—knows how many separate criminal offenses are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations, with at least one source estimating hundreds of thousands of such crimes. Many of these regulatory crimes are “strict liability”…

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