The Law Belongs to the People: A Constitutional Objection to the Pro Codes Act

🛡️ The Law Belongs to the People

A Constitutional Objection to the Pro Codes Act

A Declaration of Civic Resistance Against Legislative Privatization of Law

I. Preamble: The Law Must Be Public or It Is Not Law

The legitimacy of any democratic government rests upon the ability of its citizens to freely access, understand, and act upon the laws that govern them. The Pro Codes Act, currently under review in the United States Congress, threatens to violate this foundational truth.

Under the guise of balancing copyright protections with public access, the Act would allow private organizations to retain ownership and control over technical standards—even after those standards are incorporated into federal, state, or local law. This is a categorical contradiction of democratic principles, constitutional guarantees, and the public interest.

II. The Case Against the Pro Codes Act

A. It Violates the Constitutional Foundation of Legal Access

• Due Process Clause (5th & 14th Amendments): Citizens cannot be held accountable to laws they cannot freely access, copy, study, or redistribute. Restricting access to law—even in part—is a violation of due process.
• First Amendment – Freedom of Speech & Press: If laws cannot be quoted, reprinted, or used in education, journalism, civic discourse, or open-source tools without risk of copyright infringement, the people's freedom of speech is chilled by legal opacity.
• Supreme Court Precedent – Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org (2020): The Court ruled that official annotations to the law, when authored by public bodies, cannot be copyrighted. The same logic applies to private standards that become law. When a private document becomes mandatory, it becomes public property.

“Officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—nor control—public access to—the law.”
— Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority

B. It Establishes a System of Coercive Dependency

The Act enforces what can only be described as digital feudalism:

1. Private organizations create safety, electrical, or building codes.
2. Government adopts them into binding law.
3. The public must follow them—but cannot freely access, share, or teach them without permission.
4. “Free access” is limited to read-only portals, with no download rights, API access, or modification.
5. Updates remain under proprietary control, reinforcing permanent dependency.

This violates the principle of government by the people, instead empowering a corporate priesthood of legal interpretation.

C. It Threatens Innovation, Education, and Civil Justice

Restricting access to incorporated standards:

• Suppresses civic tech tools (legal search engines, safety checkers).
• Hinders STEM education, architecture, engineering, and building trades.
• Prevents the public from building alternate systems, offering public commentary, or integrating knowledge into machine learning, AI, or public databases.

This is not protection—it is structural domination masked as policy.

III. Legitimacy Forfeited: Treason to the Constitution

The Pro Codes Act betrays the spirit and letter of the U.S. Constitution. It enshrines the privatization of law, removes it from public stewardship, and binds it behind institutional gates.

If passed, it would represent:

• A breach of the public trust.
• A de facto privatization of government function.
• A disenfranchisement of every citizen who lacks the means or legal clearance to use the very laws that govern them.

Such an act is not just harmful—it is, in moral and philosophical terms, treasonous. It delegitimizes authority, because the authority that rules without transparency rules without consent.

“When the law becomes inaccessible, it becomes a weapon, not a covenant.”
— Modern interpretation of John Locke's principle of consent

IV. A Call to Civic Action

We, the people, cannot allow this.

• The immediate rejection of the Pro Codes Act.
• The full, unambiguous public domain status of all legal codes, standards, and regulations upon incorporation into law.
• A federally funded, open-access repository of all incorporated standards, with download rights, open API access, and no license restrictions.
• A new framework of open-source civic infrastructure, built by and for the people, with participation from all sectors.

V. Conclusion: What Is Law Without Access?

The Pro Codes Act asks us to live under a system where compliance is mandatory, but understanding is conditional.
Where knowledge is owned, and ignorance is enforced.
Where the law is the law, but only if you can afford to read it.

This is not democracy. This is a quiet coup by bureaucracy and industry.

And so we affirm:

The law must be free.
The law must be public.
The law must be ours.

Anything less is illegitimate.