An Empirical Study on the Federal Law Redundancy Rate — Based on the United States Code

Abstract

Whether there are too many laws is a perennial debate that has drawn interest from a variety of sources. The quality and rate of exploitation of legislative resources are important determinants of the redundancy rate of legislation. This paper develops an empirical research procedure to determine the legal redundancy rate by statistically sampling the use of legal articles, including two calculation indices, namely usage rate of legal articles judgments and the overall legal articles usage rate, in order to address the question "Are there too many laws". The empirical study's data analysis led to the conclusion that while the overall citation rate for the law is high, the utilization rate for legal articles in actual situations is relatively low and the redundancy rate for legal articles is high. The research also highlights areas where the empirical investigation should be strengthened, such as additional classification of the sample items and content text mining. For the legal community, the general public, and lawmakers, the findings have significant ramifications.