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The notion that a new law does NOT retroactively apply to acts done before the law was enacted is not called a 'statute of limitations'. A statue of limitation

The notion that a new law does NOT retroactively apply to acts done before the law was enacted is not called a 'statute of limitations'. A statue of limitations serves a few purposes. 1. At some point closure is better than justice, or at least, that's a theory. Better to get a crime on record because the committer of it confesses to it than not. The idea being that after, say, 10 years, the odds that the criminal would get caught have drifted off to as near to 0 as can be. 2. Records eventually get shredded if you wait long enough; eyewitness recollections in particular slowly mutate into conjecture (whilst said eyewitnesses will believe what they remember is accurate, there's plenty of proof out there that given enough time what they remember is not at all accurate and it gets worse over time). This makes it easier to accidentally convict on flawed evidence, and makes it harder for the defendant to defend themselves.

willis936 7y ago
The only cases I’ve seen it become relevant is when a crime, typically sexual assault, becomes impossible to prosecute. The assumption made is that all evidence becomes irrelevant after x number of years. x happens to be well within a human lifetime and it clearly is not accurate when using 1970s technology, let alone 2010s. There are a myriad of reasons that victims don’t charge crimes that have been committed against them. Its existence points towards having a “legal system” rather than a “justice system”.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
> The notion that a new law does NOT retroactively apply to acts done before the law was enacted is not called a 'statute of limitations'. Correct, it’s called ex post facto.
gnode 7y ago
I think it could be argued that case law is a prevalent form of ex post facto law in common law systems, and so constitutes an additional justification for statutes of limitations. Many acts are ambiguously criminal, until clarified by a test case. Legal decisions are also often made in the context of time, taking into account what is commonly considered offensive, what a person is presumed to know (in establishing mens rea). It's difficult to try some crimes with a modern perspective and take into account what was considered acceptable in the past.

willis936 7y ago

The only cases I’ve seen it become relevant is when a crime, typically sexual assault, becomes impossible to prosecute. The assumption made is that all evidence becomes irrelevant after x number of years. x happens to be well within a human lifetime and it clearly is not accurate when using 1970s technology, let alone 2010s. There are a myriad of reasons that victims don’t charge crimes that have been committed against them. Its existence points towards having a “legal system” rather than a “justice system”.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

> The notion that a new law does NOT retroactively apply to acts done before the law was enacted is not called a 'statute of limitations'. Correct, it’s called ex post facto.

gnode 7y ago

I think it could be argued that case law is a prevalent form of ex post facto law in common law systems, and so constitutes an additional justification for statutes of limitations. Many acts are ambiguously criminal, until clarified by a test case. Legal decisions are also often made in the context of time, taking into account what is commonly considered offensive, what a person is presumed to know (in establishing mens rea). It's difficult to try some crimes with a modern perspective and take into account what was considered acceptable in the past.