[cepth]

I think the general idea that "lawmakers are ex-lawyers, and therefore write extremely bureaucratic laws" is a common sentiment, but there are a number of reasons why I think this is not quite the case.

Few (if any) US representatives or senators at the federal level are actually writing out legislation themselves. They hire staffers (see the "Personal staff" section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_staff), sometimes lift language straight from lobbyist proposals (aka "model legislation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_act, which is widely used at the state level), or defer to committee staffers (who are subject matter experts) to do the heavy lifting. For example, Lina Khan served from 2019-2020 as counsel to the House's "Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law", and you can see her fingerprints all over the written work that the committee produced. The framing, and sometimes direct language, of committee report sections are clearly lifted from her legal academia work.

This is comparable to the fact that US federal judge at all levels (including SCOTUS) lean on their clerks to write the first drafts of their opinions, and serve primarily as editors of the final text.

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In regards to the empirical claim about the backgrounds of lawmakers, see page 8 of this report from the Congressional Research Service (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46705). They say that 144 House members (32.7% of the total), and 50 senators (50%) hold law degrees. While I think you may have been using a bit of hyperbole, it is worth pointing out that there are not enough lawyers in Congress for "ALL of the democrats" to be lawyers.

In terms of occupation (page 3), 85 reps and 28 senators were previously educators; 14 reps and 4 senators were physicians; etc.

Yes there are plenty of law degree holders, but it's also worth considering what law-related job they held. Per the CRS report, 29 reps and 9 senators were previously prosecutors, and 1 rep and 6 senators were previously attorney generals. It's unclear to me why a career in the criminal side of our legal system would have much bearing on how someone drafts laws affecting taxation, provision of government services, etc.

There's also the fact that many law degree holders practiced law for not long at all before winning elected office, or had more substantial "chapters" of their life not related to their degree. Take Jason Crow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Crow). He spent as much time as an Army Ranger as he did as a lawyer. One could easily construct a narrative that Mr. Crow, who has complained often about the bureaucracy of accessing veterans' healthcare, should be allergic to red tape and bureaucracy. But with the crude taxonomy of "he has a law degree", the other parts of his life would be overlooked.

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IMO, a big part of the bloated and inhumane parts of the bureaucracy have to do with the outgrowth of "administrative law" and "rulemaking" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_law; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_administrative_l... https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32240.html). Once a bill has been signed into law, the rulemaking process begins. These are where the actual details of a new law are hashed out. A bill may designate $X in funding for a program. Which contractors receive those contracts, hours of service, the amount of paperwork required, etc. are all handled at the administrative level. And it's certainly the case that for 99.9% of citizens, no one is submitting public comments during this period, and the input of ordinary people is often lacking.

So when the IRS makes a free-file options for taxes difficult to use, in large part due to Intuit's lobbying (https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...), this is not the result of a carve-out or giveaway spelled out in actual legislation's text. It's the result of an actor exploiting the opacity of the rulemaking and administrative law practices.

[jellicle]

This is an excellent comment.

The law-degree-heavy nature of Congress should be understood not as a Congress full of lawyers, but as a Congress full of the children of rich people checking boxes on their career path to high status jobs.

The modern rich kid angling to be a Senator one day might want a short stint in the military. They might want a degree in either political science or law. They might want a job as a public prosecutor or one as a TV personality (either one gives public exposure). These are essentially box-checking to be done in the years from 18-30, and after 30 you've checked a bunch of the boxes and are ready for your run for local, state, or federal office.

At no point in most of these people's lives did they have any intent of becoming a lawyer as a full-fledged career, and the convoluted nature of much US law-making is not due to the inherent nature of lawyer-politicians. The average politician spends approximately zero seconds per day writing legislation.