Our Vaguely Criminal Congress

Dan Henninger on the crap shoot that Congress routinely makes of legislation.

The "Honest Services" fraud law was recently and UNANIMIOUSLY overturned by the Supreme Court for being too vague, meaning it was virtually impossible to comply with because reasonable people couldn't understand how to obey it. This is hardly the only legislation passed in the last 20 years that has been vague to the point of unconstitutional.

In too many areas where the daily life of commerce intersects with public policy, people feel they are flying blind, uncertain of what a law or regulation requires, uncertain of how the bureaucracies empowered to enforce this morass will interpret them.

One sensed it was heading this way when landowners were prosecuted under the Endangered Species Act for violating the "habitat" of odd creatures found on their property.

This derangement of the laws' meaning is among the reasons the public is so out of sorts about politics and Congress. They think compliance with the rules is turning into a crap shoot. They are right. Here is Justice Scalia on what happened to the law's meaning in the Skilling case: "The duty probably did not have to be rooted in state law, but maybe it did. It might have been more demanding in the case of public officials, but perhaps not." Truly, we are in Wonder Land.