PolicE Dept. 855680007.

• Position: FROM THE ARCHIVES

20 YEARS AGO August/September 2001

Although unions have often been criticized for crafting unyielding work rules, legal standards actually impose greater rigidity on the workplace. Unions can be bought off, persuaded to relax a rule in a trade for money. Legal standards, on the other hand, are set in stone. If the Fair Labor Standards Act forbids a four-day, 10-hour-a-day week, then that's that. The employer can't offer more money for the flexibility, nor can an employee who desperately wants the new schedule offer to take less.

JAMES DELONG

Old Law VS. the New Economy

If you live in the United States, then you are bound in some way by laws or professional regulations that are publicly enforced but privately owned. Portions of building codes and fire regulations in every U.S. jurisdiction were devised by private organizations, who have retained the copyright to the legislation. Citizens must obviously abide by these laws, or face punishment. But if those same citizens want a copy of the laws that control their behavior, they must buy their copy, sometimes at an impressive price.

CHARLES PAUL FREUND

The Price of Legislation

The standard explanations for racial profiling focus on institutional racism, but that idea runs contrary to the sea change in social attitudes that has taken place over the last four decades. On the contrary, the practice of racial profiling grows from a trio of very tangible sources, all attributable to the War on Drugs, that $37 billion annual effort on the part of local, state, and federal lawmakers and cops to stop the sale and use of 'illicit' substances. The sources include the difficulty in policing victimless crimes in general and the resulting need for intrusive police techniques; the greater relevancy of this difficulty given the intensification of the drug war since the 1980s; and the additional incentive that asset forfeiture laws give police forces to seize money and property from suspects.

GENE CALLAHAN AND WILLIAM ANDERSON

The Roots of Racial Profiling

30 YEARS AGO

August/September 1991

Unfortunately, political reformers routinely define apathy as 'not voting.' While this hypothesis is easy to test (all you have to do is count heads), it ignores the proud tradition of, say, the Constitutional Convention delegates who threatened to walk out unless the document included a Bill of Rights. Sometimes not voting reflects the belief that the lesser of two evils is evil.

RICK HENDERSON

It's OK To...