Personally what I find offensive to common sense is the F&G Code and the DFG allows one to take pregnant females with eggs. This is biological foolishness.
In Western societies we live in a gynocentric, matriarchal system where women are given special power and privilege (sinking ship-women and children first) that is rooted in out deepest anthropological survival mechanism: you only need a couple of males to ensure the survival of the species, whereas you need a vast quantiy of females to carry that to its conclusion. That is why taking female lobsters and especially pregant female lobsters should be illegal. But can you imagine the value to the lobster population if they outlawed commercial lobstering? Same goes for purse seining Bluefin Tuna.
But getting back to replying to dmay's astute post, the problem with the "DFG Regulations" is they are regulations promulgated by a committee, they're not signed into a Code, whereas the Fish and Game Code is a California Code signed by the Governor of the State, which is why from a legal standpoint, two rules on the books, one signed by the elected Governor, the other not, the one signed by the Governor into Code takes precedence.
And that is from just a statutory standpoint. Once you add the Constitutions requirement that no law be vague as enumerated by the 5th and 14th Amendments, here you have an unsigned regulation prohibiting a conduct allowed by a law signed by the Governor of the State, thus ensuring the law is unconstitutionally vague.
This is the sort of offense (taking lobster by means other than one's hand) that any trial lawyer who slept through law school should be able get such unmeritorious charges dismissed once it gets out of the hands of the shakedown artists and into a Court of Law:
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
SECTION 1. RIGHTS GUARANTEED
PROCEDURAL DUE PROCESS—CRIMINAL
The Elements of Due Process
Clarity in Criminal Statutes: The Void–for–Vagueness Doctrine.— “Legislation may run afoul of the Due Process Clause because it fails to give adequate guidance to those who would be law–abiding, to advise defendants of the nature of the offense with which they are charged, or to guide courts in trying those who are accused.”1 Acts which are made criminal “must be defined with appropriate definiteness.”2 “There must be ascertainable standards of guilt. Men of common intelligence cannot be required to guess at the meaning of the enactment. The vagueness may be from uncertainty in regard to persons within the scope of the act . . . or in regard to the applicable tests to ascertain guilt.”3 Statutes which lack the requisite definiteness or specificity are commonly held “void for vagueness.” Such a statute may be pronounced wholly unconstitutional (unconstitutional “on its face”),[/b]4[/b] or, if the statute could be applied to both prohibitable and to protected conduct and its valuable effects outweigh its potential general harm, it could be held unconstitutional as applied.5 Generally, a vague statute that regulates in the area of First Amendment guarantees will be pronounced wholly void,6 while one that does not reach such protected conduct will either be upheld because it is applied to clearly proscribable conduct, or voided as applied when the conduct is marginal and the proscription is unclear.7
1 Musser v. Utah, 333 U.S. 95, 97 (1948) . “Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warnings. Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide explicit standards for those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory applications.” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108–09 (1972) , quoted in Village of Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, 455 U.S. 489, 498 (1982) .
2 Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 308 (1940) .
3 Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 515–16 (1948) . Cf. Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 110 (1972) .
4 Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972) ; Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566 (1974) .
5 Palmer v. City of Euclid, 402 U.S. 544 (1971) ; Village of Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, 455 U.S. 489, 494–95 (1982) .
6 Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 509–10 (1948) ; Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 (1940) .
7 E.g., United States v. National Dairy Corp., 372 U.S. 29 (1963) .
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