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Not sure why people are saying the laws aren’t accessible in America
Here’s the entire federal code of laws
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text
Here’s the federal rules and regulations
Here’s a repository of every state’s laws
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 also often references paywalled documents. E.g., I work in biomed R&D, and the FDA regulations for medical devices are tied to pay-to-play ISO standards.
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
Yes, they're there. Good luck finding what you want to find.
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
‘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.
Korea: literally that https://law.go.kr/
It even has English translations and an AI chatbot
That twitch streamer should've read this before traveling to SK, lol
(Not naming the dude, y'all know the one)
"Oh... It's not illegal? Maaaaan... Now I gotta figure out something else to do this Saturday. 😮💨"
Or:
"they forgot to make this illegal? Really?diabolical laughter" "Are you ready? from 'friends on the other side' starts playing"
New Zealand here. Yes, public libraries have the many volumes of the legal code in the reference section.
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.
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!
Isn't that partly because the US has like 52 sets of law (50 states, DC, Fed) and maybe more (County/Parish, etc)?
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.
higher body might just choose not to argue with the lower body over conflicting laws, like with cannabis legalization
Reminder that marijuana is still federally illegal.
If you are a non-citizen, you could get deported for posession of marijuana, even if your state "legalized" it, because it would still be a crime under federal laws.
So, pro tip: gain citizenship first, then, after you've been sworn in and got the citizenship papers, then you can safely smoke weed...
(Yes, people do get placed into deportation proceedings for possession weed, especially under this current shitty administration)
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.
Germany has a website containing all its statutes: https://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!
Women: exists
Taliban: "Wait, that's illegal"
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
18 points (100.0% liked)
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