Has the application of a law ever being appealed anywhere due to the lawmakers not knowing what they were voting/ruling?

Question

Suppose a lawmaker presents a law project, with a highly technical vocabulary, and effectively most of the lawmakers don't really understand what they are voting, even though they think so or pretend to. Has the application of a law ever being appealed anywhere, due to the lawmakers not knowing what they were voting/ruling?

Answer 1

No.

This does not happen. Essentially every legal system formal enough to have legislative bodies and legislatures does not consider what lawmakers actually knew when they passed the law.

On rare occasions, laws are invalided because they have "no rational basis" or are internally contradictory, or insist on something absurd or impossible. But this doesn't mean that the court looks into what the actual legislators actually knew.

Answer 2

No

As a practical matter, most legislators aren’t across the details of most laws they vote for. Most laws are drafted by professional lawyers, not legislators. They are considered by committees consisting of a tiny subset of the legislators. Most legislators don’t attend the reading speeches in the House because they’re generally boring. And, when they vote, they vote along party lines.

Now, some of these things - committee reports, reading speeches, etc. - are admissible in interpreting the law. Especially when the law is ambiguous on its face. However, none are relevant for ruling a law invalid.

In addition, the actions of the legislature in passing a law are non-justiciable. That is, if the legislature says the law was properly passed then the court will not and can not inquire beyond that.

Answer 3

france (and therefore, links in French)

Mostly, no

As a baseline, the legislator is supposed to know what they are doing. (As a practical matter, letting courts second-guess the legislator’s competence is a recipe for a constitutional crisis.)

When a law is ambiguous or difficult to apply to the case at hand, the court may consider legislative intent, as shown by the content of parliamentary debates. See for instance paragraphs 7-10 of Cour de cassation, civile, Chambre civile 3, 28 septembre 2023, 22-21.012 (a rather technical case about eminent domain, the gist of it being that an ambiguous article was understood in the light of the parliamentary debates).

A law can also be deemed unconstitutional if it is not "clear" and "intelligible". See this law review article for details about what it means (it is rather old but I believe there were no major changes since 2007). Note however that this standard (1) does not consider the legislative process and (2) is a rather low bar (more like "would the average expert in this field of law understand the new law" rather than "would the average citizen understand the law"). The main application of that rule is that amendments on a given law must be closely related to its main object; riders (cavaliers législatifs) are frequently invalidated for that reason.

Finally, note that as a practical matter, the average backbench MP does not understand the average law. That is at heart a matter of expense budget: they have enough to hire 2 to 3 junior assistants. At least one person is needed full-time in the electoral district (to handle visit calendar, calls, etc.), you probably want one with some amount of legal training to deal with the legislative process, and an ambitious MP will want someone to help with communication (social media, pressers etc.). The budget is gone before you are even thinking of hiring an expert in FooBar law; whereas the government proposal has been drafted by the Subdepartement of Foobarification, which has ten subject-matter experts at hand.

Answer 4

This is why agencies write regulations

Lawmakers don't need to be highly technical, because they can delegate authority.

E.g. Lawmakers would never contemplate whether the permissible vertical deviation in a 62’ chord of Class II (25 MPH) railroad track should be 1-3/8” (Republican platform) or 1-1/2” (Democrats).

They don't. They write a law like 49 USC 103 that tells USDOT to form a Federal Railroad Administration, gives them a set of priorities, and some money, and tells them to "promulgate regulations".

Then the FRA gets a bunch of experts together and has public process on rulemaking, and they hammer it out the much more massive 49 CFR 200-399, which includes 213.55 for the above question.

You can read them both and see where the law is a lot more accessible.

But much more importantly, if the situation changes, the FRA can change the regulations itself with their normal public comment process. For instance, after a heritage steam locomotive exploded, FRA quickly rewrote the regs to require much more demanding inspections. When the horrid Chatsworth crash happened due to cell phone distraction, FRA promptly banned cell phone use. This would have been a slow crawl through Congress.

So your question of "would Congress pass laws the they don't understand" no, they would refuse to, and would pass a law they DO understand to tell a department or administration to promulgate regulations to have the effect they want.

Or, they adopt "model laws".

For instance, almost every state and many American countries have a law which says "National Electrical Code 20xx edition is the law of our land, with these amendments". The NEC is published by a nonprofit called the National Fire Protection Association, and offered up for that purpose.

That is to say, the code is "incorporated by reference".

Likewise when endowment investment law was sorely in need of an overhaul, a group created UPMIFA, which was adopted by 49 states.

Answer 5

Suppose a lawmaker presents a law project, with a highly technical vocabulary, and effectively most of the lawmakers don't really understand what they are voting, even though they think so or pretend to. Has the application of a law ever being appealed anywhere, due to the lawmakers not knowing what they were voting/ruling?

For historical foundations: a similar issue - that of sinful (or otherwise unqualified) priests administering the sacrament or performing other religious rites - was seriously explored in the IV-th century in the debate between the Donatists and Saint Augustine. At the time it had obvious legal implications - e.g., was a marriage concluded by a priest still valid, if the priest was later determined to be unworthy of his office? Augustine provided theological doctrine that validated the rites committed in the name of the church, even if administered by unholy clergy.

It is safe to assume that western law (that is mostly traditionally Christian) follows the same logic, even if the holy ghost has been left out of the equation. So I suggest looking for examples in non-Christian legal traditions (or at least those that do not stem from the IV-th century Catholicism.)