Neil Gorsuch complains that there are too many laws in the United States

There are too many laws in the United States and thousands more are added every year, said Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Gorsuch told an audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, on Thursday that no one knows how many laws there are and that people who have tried to count them have been stunned.

Examples of ridiculous use of the law and government overreach that Gorsuch cited included a magician questioned by agricultural officials for having a rabbit in his show and a fisherman. Arrested after Getting rid of some fish that were smaller than allowed by a federal law originally aimed at the accounting industry.

He was talking about his new book. Too many laws: the human cost of too many laws which he co-wrote with legal scholar Janie Nitze.

Gorsuch, who was nominated by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court in 2017, said he wanted to address laws that affect ordinary Americans in their daily lives.

“I’ve been a judge for almost 20 years and I’ve seen many cases come to my court where ordinary Americans, decent, hard-working people trying to do the best they can, are being beaten down by the laws,” he said.

Gorsuch said no one really knows how many laws there are, but that Congress has been busy passing laws that most people know little about.

He said there are at least 5,000 federal crimes and another 300,000 regulations that can be used for prosecutions.

As a result, most Americans have likely committed a crime that could land them in prison, he said.

He also noted that 1 in 47 Americans is currently in prison, on probation or some other form of correctional supervision.

Gorsuch told the audience about Marty Hahne, a children’s performer from Missouri. After one of Hahne’s magic shows, Department of Agriculture officials showed up, showed him a badge and asked if he was licensed to use a rabbit during his performance.

Hahne then had to apply for an “animal exhibitor” license for her rabbit and was also told she needed an emergency preparedness plan for the animal.

He then had to hire a consultant to write a 28-page plan covering everything from chemical spills to hurricanes, and a department official came to his home to inspect it.

Gorsuch said a surplus of laws and regulations has led to a huge expansion in the number of lawyers and said he believes there are too many lawyers in the U.S.

He said he would not have been able to afford to hire a lawyer.

“A typical contract dispute could cost $60,000, which is the average American salary,” he said. “I couldn’t have afforded to hire my own lawyer.”

He also told the story of John Yates, a fisherman from Florida. Yates had been at sea for several days when a government inspector approached him and told him that he had to make sure that all the fish he caught were longer than the legal minimum of 20 inches.

The inspector removed all the fish from the ship’s hold and discovered that 72 were slightly smaller than the legal size required. However, they had measured the fish only up to the nose and not to the tip of the jaw, as required by law.

Inspectors conducted a second inspection when Yates returned to port, and this time found that only 69 fish were too small, a deficit of three fish.

Yates was subpoenaed and thought that was the end of the matter, but three years later, armed federal agents came to his home and he was arrested for violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It was approved after accountants destroyed evidence of the Enron scandal.

Yates was charged with destroying evidence by throwing the three fish overboard and he He was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days in jail.

He took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won, but by then he had lost his fishing business, Gorsuch said.