But politicians prefer to keep their rhetoric lofty and their meaning vague, so the word sounds like a harmless and benign aspiration. And the state keeps growing. But there may be great virtue in doing nothing. Aristotle, Cicero, and other classical philosophers thought laws should be relatively few, and seldom changed. The passage or alteration of too many laws meant that legislation had lost its quasi-eternal character and too plainly expressed the arbitrary will of the rulers.
Few people can keep up with written law.
They shouldn't have to. If the written law is basically the Ten Commandments writ large, and in keeping with customary morality, you can be a good citizen by leading a decent life, without undue study or reflection. That ought to be enough. But when laws become so numerous, detailed, and technical that decent people find themselves running afoul of them just by behaving in customary ways, something is seriously wrong. Respect for law depends heavily on the sense that it has a certain permanence, and this respect is undermined by any feeling that current legislation is fickle.