Legislatures
Lawyers are often accused of being stodgy, and certainly most lawyers are slow to take up new technologies. The practice of law itself, however, is seldom static. Clients and opponents do things and end up in situations that no one heard of before. This requires your average lawyer to be fairly quick of mind to keep on top of things. The single biggest source of eccentricity in the practice of law is your local state legislature. I am not sure what happens to these seemingly rational people when they get to the state capital, but judging from the end product, I am often led to believe that they become babbling idiots.
The motivation of the Indiana legislature are hard to determine. Often the legislature is led to draft laws that benefit one group over others. Sometimes it appears that the legislature did not understand the law they passed. It appears that the easiest way to get something passed is to tear out a terrible story from a newspaper and collect the quick knee jerk vote.
One legislator, driving home, was offended when the driver of a car in front of him tossed out a lit cigarette. So angered, the next session saw the legislature pass this:
IC 35-45-3-3 Throwing burning material from a moving motor vehicle
Sec. 3. A person who throws from a moving motor vehicle:
(1) a lighted cigarette, cigar, or match; or
(2) other burning material; commits a Class A infraction.
The fact that littering was already a Class B Infraction, and most litterers (as well as most citizens) would be hard pressed to tell you the difference between a Class A and Class B infraction, did not keep this provision from adding another page to the already bloated Indiana Code.
The frustrating aspect of this is that the legislature ducks and dodges real issues confronting the state. Issues that would require true debate and consideration require the expenditure of time and political capital. Today I discovered that the Indiana Court of Appeals agrees with me:
When female partners in Indiana agree to conceive a child through artificial insemination, both partners are the legal parents, according to a groundbreaking decision this week by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The court also chided state lawmakers for being slow to deal with advances in reproductive technology, urging the legislature to address the “current social reality” of unconventional families.
“No (legitimate) reason exists to provide the children born to lesbian parents through the use of reproductive technology with less security and protection than that given to children born to heterosexual parents through artificial insemination,” Judge Ezra H. Friedlander wrote in the ruling issued Wednesday.
“Our paramount concern should be with the effect of our laws on the reality of children’s lives,” according to the ruling, which was unanimous.
Many people will see this decision as activist judges continuing the erosion of traditional family values. In fact the Star quoted Micah Clark of the American Family Association of Indiana as saying “Once you go beyond a man and a woman, there is no stopping point. The court is creating a new family that the legislature never intended to exist.”
But this is off base. First, anyone with long term experience with Indiana appellate judges will tell you that “activist” is not a commonly used adjective. Second, the point the court is making is that technology and people are moving in new directions, and they will continue to come to the courts to resolve disputes that will result. Courts are stuck making ad hoc determinations because the legislature is stuck regulating “traditional” families.
Read the coverage from the Indianapolis Star here.
Read the case itself here.
