6 ms·

Should laws have built-in expiration dates by default?

27 points by carpdiem 17y ago

anigbrowl 17y ago
I think so...in principle. But imagine how this would work in our partisan legislature - I'm sure you can think of equally awful possibilities regardless of your individual political affiliation. While some bad laws would die a suitable death, some good ones would be made into political footballs as well. And it would create havoc in the courts. Recall that the Icelanders settled most of their disputes via blood feuds and something like weregeld. Doing that in the modern age would result in many arguments about retroactive punishment and/or restitution for people convicted under expired laws. you might be found guilty, punished, declared innocent, compensated, and then declared guilty after all and owing the money back.
- gommm 17y ago
  Yes, I don't think that it would work if laws are retroactive... But then it's quite unfair if they are not. It is an interesting idea, but I think there'll be a lot of tweaking to be done to the process to get something effective. For example, how long should the expiration date be, 6 years is to short because of the political football problem, 20 years is long if the laws aren't retroactive. Also what to do with the existing laws? Stage out their expiration? How do we choose which one will expire first? or should there be an easy way to strike down old laws?
- pmccool 17y ago
  Are retrospective criminal laws even allowed in the US? They're generally considered dicey from a human-rights point of view.
  - thwarted 17y ago
    http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec9 http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec9 "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." http://www.usconstitution.net/glossary.html#EXPOST http://www.usconstitution.net/glossary.html#EXPOST "ex post facto adj. Formulated, enacted, or operating retroactively." This is, however, a limit on Congress.
    - derefr 17y ago
      So, if someone invents a whole new kind of evil—say, simulating a universe composed purely of vingtillions of minds being tortured—they go free, even after a law is purpose-made to stop them—but the next guy to do it gets the wrap?
      - michael_dorfman 17y ago
        Right. If what they do is not forbidden under existing law, no criminal charges can be brought against them. Of course, if they harm people, those people can still file civil suits. And, it would be quite surprising if the "whole new kind of evil" managed to harm people without falling into a category already prohibited by law (i.e., assault). But, the point remains: you can't be charged for breaking a law that didn't exist at the time you broke it.
      - mseebach 17y ago
        > say, simulating a universe composed purely of vingtillions of minds being tortured No, you can't outlaw The Sims retroactively.
        stcredzero 17y ago
        Being tortured by being trapped in the pool and/or in houses without toilets?
        mseebach 17y ago
        Stuff like that. Inflicting slow and painful death for amusement. Frankly, I didn't completely follow derefr's post .. Did he really suggest that there could be a need for laws to govern what happens to simulated minds?
        thwarted 17y ago
        Read the book Altered Carbon. People can switch bodies and their minds can be run in simulation and there are laws about running someone's mind in simulation just for the puroses of torture.
gommm 17y ago
Anyone knows where that law comes from? "A person may not walk around on Sundays with an ice cream cone in his/her pocket." It makes me kind of curious
- cromulent 17y ago
  No, but there are quite a few strange old laws still around. For example, if a Welshman crosses the border on a Friday with goods for market, you can kill him. http://web.mac.com/jdewynne/OldAquarium/MISC/welsh.html http://web.mac.com/jdewynne/OldAquarium/MISC/welsh.html "In Shrewsbury in 1776, seven Welshmen were killed, three by musket, three by sword and one was bludgeoned to death with his own crops. The Borders Act has never been repealed."
  - tjic 17y ago
    My favorite crazy law is that in Massachusetts it is illegal to display an artificially created albino person. http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-33.htm http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-33.htm
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      In many states, there are laws along the lines of: 5 or more unmarried women living under the same roof constitutes a brothel. Hence, most colleges are running brothels.
      - sethg 17y ago
        IIRC Boston recently passed an ordinance forbidding landlords to rent a unit to (IIRC) groups of more than 4 unmarried persons living together. The intent was to deal with absentee landlords who rented houses to large groups of students, since (a) the students, as a rule, could outbid working families interested in the same kinds of housing; (b) there have been a number of problems with students being bad neighbors (drunken late-night parties, and so on). Since Massachusetts has same-sex marriage, I suppose that six Boston College students looking to crowd themselves into a three-bedroom house could take a short trip to City Hall and present themselves to landlords as three married couples....
bricestacey 17y ago
As a counter example, I present Florida. Florida is a no-fault driving state. A couple years ago, the law that decided this expired for about a month before it was renewed into law again. This sort of last minute law wrangling is a mess and requires millions of people reconsider their insurance temporarily. It's a "great idea," but it's terrible in practice.
- gommm 17y ago
  This could be fixed though with a transition period after the law is expired, where the law is still valid for a few months while it's being discussed. I don't think any of those ideas can work perfectly with our existing democratic system right from the beginning, it needs to be used and modified over time as problem arise (the problem of course is that governments are not very good at this kind of continuous development)
  - shrughes 17y ago
    That doesn't really make sense. Having a transition period is the same as changing the expiration date.
    - gommm 17y ago
      Of course, logically it's the same, but when dealing with people (and politicians are people), names are important, and naming it a transition period, means that it's clear that it should be discussed then.
- mseebach 17y ago
  That's just incompetence. I'm not sure making it easier for politicians to be incompetent is a good idea. Also, if all laws expire automatically, the working rhythm of the legislative body would change to accommodate this. After all, stuff like passing budgets, which is time sensitive, tend to happen in time.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
pmccool 17y ago
I'm extremely dubious about the claim that it's harder to repeal old laws than to create new ones. Why would this be the case? The big problem I see is that it makes it harder to know what the law says at any given time; that's an inevitable result of more change. Change isn't necessarily bad, but in this case, change for change's sake undoubtedly is.
- anamax 17y ago
  > The big problem I see is that it makes it harder to know what the law says at any given time; It's already the case that no one knows "what the law says at any given time". > Change isn't necessarily bad, but in this case, change for change's sake undoubtedly is. It's not change for change's sake. It's change to get rid of laws that aren't worth renewing. Since laws are, by definition, threat or imposition of force, they should be somewhat valuable. I'd argue that simple renewal isn't enough, that renewal should require more effort/votes than the original passage. After all, renewal comes after experience. If a law actually works, it will have more support with experience. Note that expiration also makes it reasonable to try more experiments because you can reasonably say "hey, if it doesn't work, we're not stuck with it". With "stay until explicit repeal", it's a lot more work to undo mistakes. (Note that almost all laws have benefiaries, and those folks fight tooth and nail against repeal to keep their benefits.)
  - pmccool 17y ago
    > It's already the case that no one knows "what the law > says at any given time". So nobody knows, for example, the road rules in their local area at any given time? That's my point: it's incumbent on people to know _some_ laws. The more stable these laws are, the easier it is to know what they say. This proposition makes them less stable. > It's not change for change's sake. It's change to get rid > of laws that aren't worth renewing. Since laws are, by > definition, threat or imposition of force, they should be > somewhat valuable. So repeal bad laws. That sounds like a better idea than presuming that all laws are bad and repealing them automatically.
    - anamax 17y ago
derefr 17y ago
What will happen when a law expires? The easiest thing to do—the thing that takes the least thinking, writing and arguing—would be to simply re-instate it. This means that this system, when the principles of efficiency are inevitably applied to it, will actually encourage the permanence of silly laws—laws will simply be made as monolithic as possible, so they only have to re-instate one thing, that everyone can pretend they read already. Now, instead, imagine a boundary on the space the law may take up. If set near (or below!) the current size of the law, this would encourage something lawmakers never, ever currently do for its own sake: refactoring. It would also encourage clarity, strict and manifold definition of terms (to allow later reuse), and many other strange and exciting (though not necessarily ethically sound) ideas.
- mseebach 17y ago
  > What will happen when a law expires? The easiest thing to do—the thing that takes the least thinking, writing and arguing—would be to simply re-instate it. Almost. But they will be read first, followed by a "reinstate" or "let expire" decision. If it's a bad or unnecessary law, this will cost political capital, which favours the "let expire" option. Then there'll be committee hearings, where citizens affected by the law will get a say, and since the text is open anyway, motions for amendments can be presented. And finally, it has to actually pass parliament, making the current parliament answerable for the passage, rather than a past one. It's a lot easier to say "yes, I agree that law is not the best, but I have prioritised other issues over fixing it" than "I voted for it, when I had the option of simply pushing the other button." > Now, instead, imagine a boundary on the space the law may take up. That sounds like a good idea. No text longer than 2000 words can be passed by a single vote.
  - ratsbane 17y ago
    I've thought for a long time that we should have a cap on the size of the body of law - say, 250,000 words. This would accomplish sunset indirectly. If someone wants to pass a new law and the body of law is already at the limit they'd have to push for something to be repealed first. As a downside, though, this might lead to obfuscated and confusing laws as legislators try to fit as many ideas as possible into few words, rather like code with lots of three-way operators. As we're all subject to all of the laws on the books, even though no one could possibly read or understand all of them, this would be a much more fair solution. The Icelandic example has, in effect, a similar cap. There can be no more laws than the law-speaker can remember. Capping the size of the body of law would be more like the Icelandic example than sunset provisions. Also you wouldn't have to worry about important laws, e.g. murder, from expiring because no one noticed. [edit - moved from top-level comment to this thread]
mistermann 17y ago
Yes, of course they should, but this will be exactly as meaningless as the other tools in your "democracy" toolkit. I see what you're getting at, but you are waaaaay late to the party.....the democracy thing has already been figured out. But, it's always good to hear from citizens. The government likes people to feel they have a voice in the way their country is run!
mrclark411 17y ago
Built in expirations do exist, they just are not required: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision
sethg 17y ago
I’m a little worried about this opening up new opportunities for political brinksmanship. “If the Majority Leader wants my vote to renew the law against dumping toxic waste into the harbor, he’d better let me get my way on the farm bill.”
tophercyll 17y ago
Consider a bicameral legislature where newly elected representatives serve a four year term in the lower body. Their sole responsibility is the review/renewal of existing laws. Every law must be renewed every four years. After completing their term in the lower body, the representatives graduate to serve a four year term the higher house. Here, they are entrusted with the power of making new laws. Elections are staggered (similar to the US sentate), so every year one fourth of the members are elected, one fourth move up, and one fourth retire. This way, the chambers have institutional memory and transitions are smooth. Both houses have the power to change the legislative topography of the nation. Because newly elected representatives serve in the lower house, when citizens vote to change the direction of the country, the first response to public opinion is the removal of existing laws. Only after serving a term in the lower house can laws be added. To make this kind of system successful, there might need to be a legal review process that demands small, unbundled laws. Or perhaps a simple word count like @derefr and @mseebach suggest. I guess the fact that we even think about this stuff pretty much means we're geeks. =)
- stcredzero 17y ago
  As it stands, the State of California has a bureau that uses software to ensure new laws do not conflict with existing ones.
  - igurari 17y ago
    Do you have a little more information about that? I'm curious to know how the software would do that, and how sophisticated it is. I would imagine it is simply based on user input representations of the bills, and fairly simple tests, but even that would be difficult to do accurately/effectively.
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      I was involved in a software project there in the late 90's. Their software back then seemed to just consist of a search engine on the text of the bills. There may have been other tools I didn't know about. My project there was fairly limited. My (probably incomplete or incorrect) understanding was that they would vet a new law by doing keyword searches concerning the main points of the new law. So if a there was a new law about people's lawns, they'd search for "lawn" and whatever other keywords or synonyms would occur to them.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

27 points by carpdiem 17y ago

I think so...in principle. But imagine how this would work in our partisan legislature - I'm sure you can think of equally awful possibilities regardless of your individual political affiliation. While some bad laws would die a suitable death, some good ones would be made into political footballs as well. And it would create havoc in the courts. Recall that the Icelanders settled most of their disputes via blood feuds and something like weregeld. Doing that in the modern age would result in many arguments about retroactive punishment and/or restitution for people convicted under expired laws. you might be found guilty, punished, declared innocent, compensated, and then declared guilty after all and owing the money back.

gommm 17y ago
Yes, I don't think that it would work if laws are retroactive... But then it's quite unfair if they are not. It is an interesting idea, but I think there'll be a lot of tweaking to be done to the process to get something effective. For example, how long should the expiration date be, 6 years is to short because of the political football problem, 20 years is long if the laws aren't retroactive. Also what to do with the existing laws? Stage out their expiration? How do we choose which one will expire first? or should there be an easy way to strike down old laws?
pmccool 17y ago
Are retrospective criminal laws even allowed in the US? They're generally considered dicey from a human-rights point of view.
- thwarted 17y ago
  http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec9 http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec9 "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." http://www.usconstitution.net/glossary.html#EXPOST http://www.usconstitution.net/glossary.html#EXPOST "ex post facto adj. Formulated, enacted, or operating retroactively." This is, however, a limit on Congress.
  - derefr 17y ago
    So, if someone invents a whole new kind of evil—say, simulating a universe composed purely of vingtillions of minds being tortured—they go free, even after a law is purpose-made to stop them—but the next guy to do it gets the wrap?
    - michael_dorfman 17y ago
      Right. If what they do is not forbidden under existing law, no criminal charges can be brought against them. Of course, if they harm people, those people can still file civil suits. And, it would be quite surprising if the "whole new kind of evil" managed to harm people without falling into a category already prohibited by law (i.e., assault). But, the point remains: you can't be charged for breaking a law that didn't exist at the time you broke it.
    - mseebach 17y ago
      > say, simulating a universe composed purely of vingtillions of minds being tortured No, you can't outlaw The Sims retroactively.
      - stcredzero 17y ago
        Being tortured by being trapped in the pool and/or in houses without toilets?
        mseebach 17y ago
        Stuff like that. Inflicting slow and painful death for amusement. Frankly, I didn't completely follow derefr's post .. Did he really suggest that there could be a need for laws to govern what happens to simulated minds?
        thwarted 17y ago
        Read the book Altered Carbon. People can switch bodies and their minds can be run in simulation and there are laws about running someone's mind in simulation just for the puroses of torture.

gommm 17y ago

Anyone knows where that law comes from? "A person may not walk around on Sundays with an ice cream cone in his/her pocket." It makes me kind of curious

cromulent 17y ago
No, but there are quite a few strange old laws still around. For example, if a Welshman crosses the border on a Friday with goods for market, you can kill him. http://web.mac.com/jdewynne/OldAquarium/MISC/welsh.html http://web.mac.com/jdewynne/OldAquarium/MISC/welsh.html "In Shrewsbury in 1776, seven Welshmen were killed, three by musket, three by sword and one was bludgeoned to death with his own crops. The Borders Act has never been repealed."
- tjic 17y ago
  My favorite crazy law is that in Massachusetts it is illegal to display an artificially created albino person. http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-33.htm http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-33.htm
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    In many states, there are laws along the lines of: 5 or more unmarried women living under the same roof constitutes a brothel. Hence, most colleges are running brothels.
    - sethg 17y ago
      IIRC Boston recently passed an ordinance forbidding landlords to rent a unit to (IIRC) groups of more than 4 unmarried persons living together. The intent was to deal with absentee landlords who rented houses to large groups of students, since (a) the students, as a rule, could outbid working families interested in the same kinds of housing; (b) there have been a number of problems with students being bad neighbors (drunken late-night parties, and so on). Since Massachusetts has same-sex marriage, I suppose that six Boston College students looking to crowd themselves into a three-bedroom house could take a short trip to City Hall and present themselves to landlords as three married couples....

bricestacey 17y ago

As a counter example, I present Florida. Florida is a no-fault driving state. A couple years ago, the law that decided this expired for about a month before it was renewed into law again. This sort of last minute law wrangling is a mess and requires millions of people reconsider their insurance temporarily. It's a "great idea," but it's terrible in practice.

gommm 17y ago
This could be fixed though with a transition period after the law is expired, where the law is still valid for a few months while it's being discussed. I don't think any of those ideas can work perfectly with our existing democratic system right from the beginning, it needs to be used and modified over time as problem arise (the problem of course is that governments are not very good at this kind of continuous development)
- shrughes 17y ago
  That doesn't really make sense. Having a transition period is the same as changing the expiration date.
  - gommm 17y ago
    Of course, logically it's the same, but when dealing with people (and politicians are people), names are important, and naming it a transition period, means that it's clear that it should be discussed then.
mseebach 17y ago
That's just incompetence. I'm not sure making it easier for politicians to be incompetent is a good idea. Also, if all laws expire automatically, the working rhythm of the legislative body would change to accommodate this. After all, stuff like passing budgets, which is time sensitive, tend to happen in time.
- anigbrowl 17y ago

pmccool 17y ago

I'm extremely dubious about the claim that it's harder to repeal old laws than to create new ones. Why would this be the case? The big problem I see is that it makes it harder to know what the law says at any given time; that's an inevitable result of more change. Change isn't necessarily bad, but in this case, change for change's sake undoubtedly is.

anamax 17y ago
> The big problem I see is that it makes it harder to know what the law says at any given time; It's already the case that no one knows "what the law says at any given time". > Change isn't necessarily bad, but in this case, change for change's sake undoubtedly is. It's not change for change's sake. It's change to get rid of laws that aren't worth renewing. Since laws are, by definition, threat or imposition of force, they should be somewhat valuable. I'd argue that simple renewal isn't enough, that renewal should require more effort/votes than the original passage. After all, renewal comes after experience. If a law actually works, it will have more support with experience. Note that expiration also makes it reasonable to try more experiments because you can reasonably say "hey, if it doesn't work, we're not stuck with it". With "stay until explicit repeal", it's a lot more work to undo mistakes. (Note that almost all laws have benefiaries, and those folks fight tooth and nail against repeal to keep their benefits.)
- pmccool 17y ago
  > It's already the case that no one knows "what the law > says at any given time". So nobody knows, for example, the road rules in their local area at any given time? That's my point: it's incumbent on people to know _some_ laws. The more stable these laws are, the easier it is to know what they say. This proposition makes them less stable. > It's not change for change's sake. It's change to get rid > of laws that aren't worth renewing. Since laws are, by > definition, threat or imposition of force, they should be > somewhat valuable. So repeal bad laws. That sounds like a better idea than presuming that all laws are bad and repealing them automatically.
  - anamax 17y ago

derefr 17y ago

What will happen when a law expires? The easiest thing to do—the thing that takes the least thinking, writing and arguing—would be to simply re-instate it. This means that this system, when the principles of efficiency are inevitably applied to it, will actually encourage the permanence of silly laws—laws will simply be made as monolithic as possible, so they only have to re-instate one thing, that everyone can pretend they read already. Now, instead, imagine a boundary on the space the law may take up. If set near (or below!) the current size of the law, this would encourage something lawmakers never, ever currently do for its own sake: refactoring. It would also encourage clarity, strict and manifold definition of terms (to allow later reuse), and many other strange and exciting (though not necessarily ethically sound) ideas.

mseebach 17y ago
> What will happen when a law expires? The easiest thing to do—the thing that takes the least thinking, writing and arguing—would be to simply re-instate it. Almost. But they will be read first, followed by a "reinstate" or "let expire" decision. If it's a bad or unnecessary law, this will cost political capital, which favours the "let expire" option. Then there'll be committee hearings, where citizens affected by the law will get a say, and since the text is open anyway, motions for amendments can be presented. And finally, it has to actually pass parliament, making the current parliament answerable for the passage, rather than a past one. It's a lot easier to say "yes, I agree that law is not the best, but I have prioritised other issues over fixing it" than "I voted for it, when I had the option of simply pushing the other button." > Now, instead, imagine a boundary on the space the law may take up. That sounds like a good idea. No text longer than 2000 words can be passed by a single vote.
- ratsbane 17y ago
  I've thought for a long time that we should have a cap on the size of the body of law - say, 250,000 words. This would accomplish sunset indirectly. If someone wants to pass a new law and the body of law is already at the limit they'd have to push for something to be repealed first. As a downside, though, this might lead to obfuscated and confusing laws as legislators try to fit as many ideas as possible into few words, rather like code with lots of three-way operators. As we're all subject to all of the laws on the books, even though no one could possibly read or understand all of them, this would be a much more fair solution. The Icelandic example has, in effect, a similar cap. There can be no more laws than the law-speaker can remember. Capping the size of the body of law would be more like the Icelandic example than sunset provisions. Also you wouldn't have to worry about important laws, e.g. murder, from expiring because no one noticed. [edit - moved from top-level comment to this thread]

mistermann 17y ago

Yes, of course they should, but this will be exactly as meaningless as the other tools in your "democracy" toolkit. I see what you're getting at, but you are waaaaay late to the party.....the democracy thing has already been figured out. But, it's always good to hear from citizens. The government likes people to feel they have a voice in the way their country is run!

mrclark411 17y ago

Built in expirations do exist, they just are not required: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision

sethg 17y ago

I’m a little worried about this opening up new opportunities for political brinksmanship. “If the Majority Leader wants my vote to renew the law against dumping toxic waste into the harbor, he’d better let me get my way on the farm bill.”

tophercyll 17y ago

Consider a bicameral legislature where newly elected representatives serve a four year term in the lower body. Their sole responsibility is the review/renewal of existing laws. Every law must be renewed every four years. After completing their term in the lower body, the representatives graduate to serve a four year term the higher house. Here, they are entrusted with the power of making new laws. Elections are staggered (similar to the US sentate), so every year one fourth of the members are elected, one fourth move up, and one fourth retire. This way, the chambers have institutional memory and transitions are smooth. Both houses have the power to change the legislative topography of the nation. Because newly elected representatives serve in the lower house, when citizens vote to change the direction of the country, the first response to public opinion is the removal of existing laws. Only after serving a term in the lower house can laws be added. To make this kind of system successful, there might need to be a legal review process that demands small, unbundled laws. Or perhaps a simple word count like @derefr and @mseebach suggest. I guess the fact that we even think about this stuff pretty much means we're geeks. =)

stcredzero 17y ago
As it stands, the State of California has a bureau that uses software to ensure new laws do not conflict with existing ones.
- igurari 17y ago
  Do you have a little more information about that? I'm curious to know how the software would do that, and how sophisticated it is. I would imagine it is simply based on user input representations of the bills, and fairly simple tests, but even that would be difficult to do accurately/effectively.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    I was involved in a software project there in the late 90's. Their software back then seemed to just consist of a search engine on the text of the bills. There may have been other tools I didn't know about. My project there was fairly limited. My (probably incomplete or incorrect) understanding was that they would vet a new law by doing keyword searches concerning the main points of the new law. So if a there was a new law about people's lawns, they'd search for "lawn" and whatever other keywords or synonyms would occur to them.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]