[ExI] Expanding who can enforce the law in the US

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 4:07 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> Honestly, what is stopping you from suing, if you know of financial malfeasance on the other matters?  Get on it, me lad!  I won’t object, not for a minute.  I’ll cheer you on.  I have no current bets on the prediction markets, being distracted with life matters, so I have no personal stake in it one way or the other.

Lack of standing.  Generally, in the US, private citizens are not
allowed to sue to enforce criminal breaches of law.  Private citizens
can file civil suits if there is a civil complement - but often there
isn't.

I wonder what might happen if a Constitutional amendment passed
allowing to sue to enforce federal law, and the feds to sue to enforce
federal law, where the usual party is failing to enforce their body of
law.  In the former case, restrict to breaches that affect the state
in question or its citizens (though anything that affects the US as a
whole also affects each state by definition).  This might force some
of the power that Congress has deferred to the executive branch over
the past few decades back out of the executive branch.