5 ms·

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

by 21 8y ago

elliekelly 8y ago
Agreed. Massachusetts still has a law on the books that says a contract entered into by a woman is presumed valid even if her husband didn't know about it. Progressive at the time but kind of disgusting that no one has thought to strike it from the books in the past 50 years.
wtfrmyinitials 8y ago
We've already lost count of the number of federal laws in the U.S. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-questio...
- thomaskcr 8y ago
  And people are constantly asking for things that are already laws - we need to actually enforce our laws so that bad ones can be removed also in my opinion.
ryan-allen 8y ago
That'd open up an interesting industry where people would be trawling expiring laws looking to exploit them for economic gain. Perhaps a 'review' date would be more practical!
- 1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
  As opposed to the current system where people agitate for new laws to exploit them for economic gain!
quickthrower2 8y ago
How does that work with case law? For example a case is decided based on an old law, that law has now gone, is that case no longer a precedent? (IANAL)
time-domain0 8y ago
The commercial code (UCC) is already a horrible, inconsistent mess.
time-domain0 8y ago
Laws need diffs and refactoring.
- flukus 8y ago
  I'd like unit tests too. Done in TDD fashion by the creators of the law, not the ad-hoc edge case finding of the precedent system.
- rat87 8y ago
  This is why Programmers shouldn't be legislatures /s but sort of no /s Laws aren't clean enough for diffs. refactoring isn't a bad idea but is quite difficult. Laws aren't written and can't be written as exactly specified specs. Laws are written to be interpreted loosely by human judges and applied to a bunch of difficult real world messiness. Not clearly defined interfaces and types.
deleted 8y ago
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mbay 8y ago
yeah man, every 100 years we should have to re-abolish slavery FOH

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

by 21 8y ago

Laws should have an expiration date. Otherwise in 100 years there will be 1 million laws.

Agreed. Massachusetts still has a law on the books that says a contract entered into by a woman is presumed valid even if her husband didn't know about it. Progressive at the time but kind of disgusting that no one has thought to strike it from the books in the past 50 years.

wtfrmyinitials 8y ago

We've already lost count of the number of federal laws in the U.S. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-questio...

thomaskcr 8y ago
And people are constantly asking for things that are already laws - we need to actually enforce our laws so that bad ones can be removed also in my opinion.

ryan-allen 8y ago

That'd open up an interesting industry where people would be trawling expiring laws looking to exploit them for economic gain. Perhaps a 'review' date would be more practical!

1stcity3rdcoast 8y ago
As opposed to the current system where people agitate for new laws to exploit them for economic gain!

quickthrower2 8y ago

How does that work with case law? For example a case is decided based on an old law, that law has now gone, is that case no longer a precedent? (IANAL)

time-domain0 8y ago

The commercial code (UCC) is already a horrible, inconsistent mess.

time-domain0 8y ago

Laws need diffs and refactoring.

flukus 8y ago
I'd like unit tests too. Done in TDD fashion by the creators of the law, not the ad-hoc edge case finding of the precedent system.
rat87 8y ago
This is why Programmers shouldn't be legislatures /s but sort of no /s Laws aren't clean enough for diffs. refactoring isn't a bad idea but is quite difficult. Laws aren't written and can't be written as exactly specified specs. Laws are written to be interpreted loosely by human judges and applied to a bunch of difficult real world messiness. Not clearly defined interfaces and types.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mbay 8y ago

yeah man, every 100 years we should have to re-abolish slavery FOH