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This is slightly meta, but I'm curious about this concept of legislating for the distant-ish future. My immediate reaction is "cheap" trick, quite literally. I

This is slightly meta, but I'm curious about this concept of legislating for the distant-ish future. My immediate reaction is "cheap" trick, quite literally. It's cheap in the sense that the political/public opposition will be pretty weak on legislation that happens 23 years from now. The authors won't be around to deal with the consequences. It also feels a little wrong to deciding things They will presumably still have a parliament in 2040, shouldn't that parliament decide on laws? Conversely, if future parliaments will decide anyway by altering, we're back to cheap, empty gestures. OTOH, maybe this is a way of de-politicizing.. focusing attention away from the short term, horse trading, and vocal interest groups. Any thoughts on highly delayed legislation like this?

majewsky 9y ago
You could use that line of thinking to argue for all laws to be abolished when the next parliament is elected. Laws are almost always designed to be in effect until repealed so that parliament can focus on what needs changing (rather than what needs sustaining). It also makes society more stable and increases legal certainty. If you want to argue against a law that goes into effect 20 years from today, I'd rather base the argument on our utter inability of predicting things.