A powerless legislative minority need not understand the laws it votes on

Evidence

As far as the course of the Empire State was concerned, it did not seem to matter if Al Smith understood the bills or not. The Democrats, a badly outnumbered minority in the Senate and Assembly, a party that had not elected a Governor since 1893, had no real say in the state’s affairs. Most of the Democratic legislators, understanding this, and understanding that in the rare instances in which their votes were important they would be told how to cast them by their leaders back in New York, took their jobs with the lightness they felt they deserved. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 517

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Group intentions cannot be reliably ascribed to legislatures — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2482; Legislatures cannot foresee every result of unguarded statutory language — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1335

Broader Connections

• Group intentions cannot be reliably ascribed to legislatures #expands (0.78) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2482
• Legislatures cannot foresee every result of unguarded statutory language #corroborates (0.72) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 1335