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> Parliament cannot restate the entire legal corpus each session. This is probably bad for some reasons, but I have wondered about a system where the legislatu

> Parliament cannot restate the entire legal corpus each session. This is probably bad for some reasons, but I have wondered about a system where the legislature does have to restate the entire legal corpus every session. Like, everything resets at the end of the year and whatever didn’t get passed in the last 12 months is no longer law. Paired with some kind of rule that says you can’t just vote to pass “everything that already exists”. In my fantasy, there would be less weird cruft in the law, and less bikeshedding about stuff that really should be done.

dxdm 6mo ago
Seems to be one of those things where you think about them for a minute and go, huh, that'd be neat, but then you think about it some more how it'd play out in the real world, and that's when it starts to get actually interesting.
rocmcd 6mo ago
Maybe not every 12 months / session, but I definitely think having a way to "sunset" certain types of laws would be a net positive on society.
- rogerrogerr 6mo ago
  "If no one is charged with $crime for n years, it goes away unless explicitly renewed" would fix some of the weirder laws still on the books, but by definition wouldn't really change much.
  - dragonwriter 6mo ago
    No, it wouldn't fix anything, but it would result it annoying periodic pro forma charges being filed. When you take a measure and tie a control function to it, you make it a target. When you do that, Goodhart’s law applies, and when the specific connection is as simple as “maintaining a criminal law requires charging someone under it with at least X frequency”, the failure mode is obvious.
ileonichwiesz 6mo ago
Similarly, I sometimes daydream about those ancient law systems that were so simple that they could be engraved on a stone pillar and placed in a public area. Could you imagine a legal system that can be read and understood in minutes instead of the sprawling, byzantine thing that takes years of law school to comprehend?
dragonwriter 6mo ago
In reality, there would probably be almost as much archaic weird cruft and more new ill considered cruft snuck in through each of the many annual bills that would mostly serve to readopt large sections of the prior law verbatim which would end up being must-lass legislation being considered on short deadlines.

dxdm 6mo ago

Seems to be one of those things where you think about them for a minute and go, huh, that'd be neat, but then you think about it some more how it'd play out in the real world, and that's when it starts to get actually interesting.

rocmcd 6mo ago

Maybe not every 12 months / session, but I definitely think having a way to "sunset" certain types of laws would be a net positive on society.

rogerrogerr 6mo ago
"If no one is charged with $crime for n years, it goes away unless explicitly renewed" would fix some of the weirder laws still on the books, but by definition wouldn't really change much.
- dragonwriter 6mo ago
  No, it wouldn't fix anything, but it would result it annoying periodic pro forma charges being filed. When you take a measure and tie a control function to it, you make it a target. When you do that, Goodhart’s law applies, and when the specific connection is as simple as “maintaining a criminal law requires charging someone under it with at least X frequency”, the failure mode is obvious.

ileonichwiesz 6mo ago

Similarly, I sometimes daydream about those ancient law systems that were so simple that they could be engraved on a stone pillar and placed in a public area. Could you imagine a legal system that can be read and understood in minutes instead of the sprawling, byzantine thing that takes years of law school to comprehend?

dragonwriter 6mo ago

In reality, there would probably be almost as much archaic weird cruft and more new ill considered cruft snuck in through each of the many annual bills that would mostly serve to readopt large sections of the prior law verbatim which would end up being must-lass legislation being considered on short deadlines.