Is Washington making a federal case out of everything? Researchers have discovered a major trend toward federalization of crimes since the nation was founded in 1776, Accuracy in Media reports. A study has recorded a major boost in the quantity of federal crimes within U.S. law.
"When the country started, there were basically three crimes: piracy, counterfeiting and treason," former Attorney General Edwin Meese told the publication. "At the time of our [1998] report, there were some 4,000 crimes."
Meese is currently chairman of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He said most federal crimes became such in the last 30 years.
A Heritage Foundation panel on June 17 discussed substantial expansion of federal crime laws and power shifts from state to federal governments, according to the report. Meese, John Baker and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert attended.
Baker and Gohmert told Accuracy in Media the federal government has created too many laws that focus on state issues, and it has been consistently removing powers from states.
Baker, a member of the American Bar Association's Task Force on the Federalization of Crime, is not new to the study of federal crime counts. He said current information stems from studies done 25 years ago.
"As of early 1983, the Justice Department put the number at 3,000 crimes and we've worked off that figure," Baker told the publication. "[They] did a hand count of 27,000 pages in the US Code. No one since then has [undertaken such a tally]."
Researchers took that number and updated it to include new federal crimes that have been added since the original report.
Baker said researchers often run into problems when counting crimes because federal statutes often encompass multiple crimes within a text.
"One statute in particular in the last eight years was enacted right after [September 11] It contains 60 crimes," Baker said.
He said a team of researchers searched documents for the keywords "fine" and "imprison" to reach a more precise figure of federal crimes created since the 25-year-old report.
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert said lawmakers don't always scan federal laws inside bills and acts to make sure they don't strip state governments of power.
According to the Accuracy in Media report, Gohmert, a former judge on the Judiciary Committee, said he encountered a similar problem with a fellow House member about a penalty within a bill. He spoke with the legislator and expressed his concern:
"I went to him and I said, 'Look, I don't think this is doing what you really want it to do, and he said, 'You read the bill?' and I said, 'Yeah, and as a former judge I'd have a real problem interpreting the bill, and I don't think this is what you want.'"
Gohmert told Accuracy in Media many lawmakers pass bills that transfer authority to the federal government so they do not appear "soft on crime." Members of Congress often pass legislation granting federal government authority over issues previously handled at the state level to appear proactive and get re-elected.
"The power in Washington is like Tolkien's ring," Gohmert said. "Really good, wonderful people get the ring, and it changes them and they can't put it down, they can't let it go, they gotta fight and do whatever it takes."
Baker and Gohmert told the publication the federal usurpation of power will continue to worsen if left unchecked.
"The more that the American people come to accept that any federal agency with power is somehow a police power, we are, piece by piece, building the police state that the left worries about," Baker said. "Both left and right ought to be worried about the expansion of federal criminal law if we value our liberty which the Founders understood meant leaving general police powers at the local level."
