5 ms·

IMO, there should be automatic sunset provision in every law passed in this country, like the one existed for the Patriotic Act, and reviewed, renewed or expire

IMO, there should be automatic sunset provision in every law passed in this country, like the one existed for the Patriotic Act, and reviewed, renewed or expired every 5 or 10 years.

gefh 9y ago
Great, now there's a legislative breakdown on the week that that the murder law had to be re-passed, and it's legal until Congress resumes...
- dmix 9y ago
  Why would fundamental laws such as violence or theft need expiry or review? Much like the constitution there should be a baseline and non-aggression seems like an obvious first law.
tomohawk 9y ago
Very much agree. It would be great if laws sunset after no more than 10 years if only a mere majority wanted the law. With a super majority, then the law could last, say 50 years. This would allow for more experimentation and for consensus building. As it is now, the law is always in the context "and forevermore, it shall be this way". If the context was, let's try this for a few years and see what happens, it would be a less contentious thing. Without the imposed time limits, partisans grab as much as they can whenever they can. Ancient Isrealite law had something similar with the jubilee. Every 50 years, debt was forgiven and many other things reset. This tended to keep things more balanced.
saryant 9y ago
Texas has a form of this. Every state agency (with a handful of exceptions) will automatically be abolished every 5-10 years absent explicit action by the legislature.
- makomk 9y ago
  Yes, and this resulted in a fairly unpleasant fiasco a few months ago in which the governor of Texas had to call an emergency session in order to renew the Texas Medical Board's existence because a senator had held it hostage in order to try and force through a bill banning trans women from using women's restrooms. (A lot of the national press incorrectly portrayed this as the Texas governor calling an emergency session to ban trans women from women's restrooms. While that was debated as part of the emergency session, it wasn't the goal and the governor made allowing it or anything else to be debated conditional on passing the critical Texas Medical Board renewal - forcing the supporters of the bathroom bill to pass that first and give up their leverage in order to get a bathroom bill vote they would inevitably lose. The national media reporting on this was terrible.)
ridgeguy 9y ago
I hate the Patriot Act too, but beware unintended consequences. How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that law continues to serve our society well. And I'm certain it would not be renewed by our current Federal government. Ditto for regulations on water, sewage, pharma purity and many other laws that facilitate civilization. It's all very nice to say 'sunset every law', but we depend on many of them being in place. Like removing redundant rivets on an aircraft. You can't be sure which ones are critical. The cost of discovering that can be quite high.
- dmix 9y ago
  > How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that law continues to serve our society well. Maybe certain parts of it - yes. But I've read many articles talking about how housing segregation is far worse than it was even before the civil rights act. The act explicitly cites this problem yet completely failed to address it. Some acts can have obvious no-debate reenactment. But this deters broad sweeping legislation from being passed, if subsets are not well thought out or are pigeonholed in. Why not pin sections onto acts so you can easily repeat ones with strong data/political support, while ending other less effective parts? That said, there should no doubt be a dichotomy between human rights and constitutional limitations (which are pre-emptive limitations on legislation) and the general type of policies passed by congress. My primary focus is on economy law as well. Social law might be more socially evolutionary.
learc83 9y ago
I used to think this was a great idea, but now I'm pretty convinced it would never work. Imagine the equivalent of constant miniature government shutdowns every time a law expired and congress couldn't come to a consensus.
makomk 9y ago
Think about how much pork and other dubious unrelated provisions get attached to bills now. Now imagine what would happen if politicians got a regular opportunity to hold the continuing existence of every single law currently on the books hostage, no matter how important, as a tactic for getting their way on other things they wanted.

IMO, there should be automatic sunset provision in every law passed in this country, like the one existed for the Patriotic Act, and reviewed, renewed or expired every 5 or 10 years.

gefh 9y ago

Great, now there's a legislative breakdown on the week that that the murder law had to be re-passed, and it's legal until Congress resumes...

dmix 9y ago
Why would fundamental laws such as violence or theft need expiry or review? Much like the constitution there should be a baseline and non-aggression seems like an obvious first law.

tomohawk 9y ago

Very much agree. It would be great if laws sunset after no more than 10 years if only a mere majority wanted the law. With a super majority, then the law could last, say 50 years. This would allow for more experimentation and for consensus building. As it is now, the law is always in the context "and forevermore, it shall be this way". If the context was, let's try this for a few years and see what happens, it would be a less contentious thing. Without the imposed time limits, partisans grab as much as they can whenever they can. Ancient Isrealite law had something similar with the jubilee. Every 50 years, debt was forgiven and many other things reset. This tended to keep things more balanced.

saryant 9y ago

Texas has a form of this. Every state agency (with a handful of exceptions) will automatically be abolished every 5-10 years absent explicit action by the legislature.

makomk 9y ago
Yes, and this resulted in a fairly unpleasant fiasco a few months ago in which the governor of Texas had to call an emergency session in order to renew the Texas Medical Board's existence because a senator had held it hostage in order to try and force through a bill banning trans women from using women's restrooms. (A lot of the national press incorrectly portrayed this as the Texas governor calling an emergency session to ban trans women from women's restrooms. While that was debated as part of the emergency session, it wasn't the goal and the governor made allowing it or anything else to be debated conditional on passing the critical Texas Medical Board renewal - forcing the supporters of the bathroom bill to pass that first and give up their leverage in order to get a bathroom bill vote they would inevitably lose. The national media reporting on this was terrible.)

ridgeguy 9y ago

I hate the Patriot Act too, but beware unintended consequences. How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that law continues to serve our society well. And I'm certain it would not be renewed by our current Federal government. Ditto for regulations on water, sewage, pharma purity and many other laws that facilitate civilization. It's all very nice to say 'sunset every law', but we depend on many of them being in place. Like removing redundant rivets on an aircraft. You can't be sure which ones are critical. The cost of discovering that can be quite high.

dmix 9y ago
> How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that law continues to serve our society well. Maybe certain parts of it - yes. But I've read many articles talking about how housing segregation is far worse than it was even before the civil rights act. The act explicitly cites this problem yet completely failed to address it. Some acts can have obvious no-debate reenactment. But this deters broad sweeping legislation from being passed, if subsets are not well thought out or are pigeonholed in. Why not pin sections onto acts so you can easily repeat ones with strong data/political support, while ending other less effective parts? That said, there should no doubt be a dichotomy between human rights and constitutional limitations (which are pre-emptive limitations on legislation) and the general type of policies passed by congress. My primary focus is on economy law as well. Social law might be more socially evolutionary.

learc83 9y ago

I used to think this was a great idea, but now I'm pretty convinced it would never work. Imagine the equivalent of constant miniature government shutdowns every time a law expired and congress couldn't come to a consensus.

makomk 9y ago

Think about how much pork and other dubious unrelated provisions get attached to bills now. Now imagine what would happen if politicians got a regular opportunity to hold the continuing existence of every single law currently on the books hostage, no matter how important, as a tactic for getting their way on other things they wanted.