Expiration Dates on Laws

I notice this isn't something anyone else seems to talk about, but it seems like the best idea imaginable from a libertarian standpoint:

All laws, bureaus, systems, ministries, agencies, taxes, tariffs, and any other governmental thing must have an end date, beyond which the thing would need to be consciously reinstated. No laws on the books from 100 years ago about lanterns or telegraphs, no governmental agencies that once solved a problem but now do nothing, no taxes that stay permanent. If something earns its keep, it can always be continued when it's up for expiration.

What does the political forum think about this?

 

Who gets to decide what stays and goes? Because here in Texas we have a sunset commission that does that, but it's a special interest nightmare.

 

It would give politicians something to do since they seem to have lost their way for the last 5 years.

 

I believe we need to "un-delegate" some social Powers no longer necessary and proper for our elected representatives in modern times.

 

Jefferson liked the idea because the laws of society should always be that of each generation.

I'm not so sure. In reality, I think he's right, but I would like to think that some rights are immutable.

 

Uncle Ferd says dat's the statue o' limitations...

... he knows a lot `bout Consitutional stuff like dat.

 

The FAA still has a regulation forbidding wearing of spurs while piloting an airplane.

Automatic sunsetting would be a good idea.

 

Absolutely.

One of the necessary Constitutional Amendments to repair the Republic is the mandatory sunsetting of ALL government departments except Defense.

On a period not exceeding 9 years, every federal program should be terminated if not re-authorized by formal roll-call vote in both Houses and signed by the President.

On a period not exceeding 5 years, all TAX bills must be re-authorized.

 

and faith based initiatives should be fist to go...

 

I really don't know. It's just an idea I had - I'd never heard of sunsetting before now, and one always needs to be aware in politics that the best ideas have about eight ways to go wrong.

I don't see why you couldn't have a constitution be enduring. After all, the idea of expiration dates has to be something that doesn't itself expire, or it won't work.

We can only hope that our legislature would do the right thing, and vote to continue senseless laws on grounds of their inherent cuteness.

Ouch. Then how do we minimize this bloated military? Does it just grow and grow?

 

While I'm not a libertarian, I believe that all laws should be examined for:

Effectiveness: do they do what they are supposed to do?
Harm: Do they cause more harm than good, despite their effectiveness?
Cost: Do the results justify their costs?
Budgeting: Is there too much or too little money funding these laws?
Relevance: Are the laws still useful in a changing society?

This should be done every 5 years.

I'm also a fan of referendums and plebiscites, which are not common enough.

 

This strikes me as impractical. You're talking about thousands of laws and regulations in any given jurisdiction (and most people live in several) even after you removed all the excessive legislation. I can only see this being either a meaningless rubber-stamp process or bogging government down in yet more petty political arguments. There is also the inevitable case where someone is charged with a crime only for embarrassed prosecutors to discover that it went out-of-date the week before.

There are generally already means by which to remove or update existing legislation and if it's important enough, there is no reason why people shouldn't be expected to be proactive in acting on it. I work in software development so I know that automation is a poor solution to laziness.

 

The problem is that unless they have to re-pass the bills, most of them never get a backward glance. The other problem is that the political, economic, and social systems all adapt to long term laws and thus lead to unintended consequences. And for that matter, the world economy changes too fast for a law passed even in 1990 to have any real relevence to high tech industries, to say nothing of a law passed in 1890. Yet we really rarely tweak a bill let alone repeal it. We just put law after law on top of the old laws and pretend to have solved things. It's like giving someone pills for a disease and keeping them on those pills forever, and then giving them new pills to treat the symptoms of the other pills. If America were a patient, all she would be eating are pills.

 

I think it's a great idea. Sunsets should be with each new Congress or, at the state level, each new legislature. This way, everyone is represented and no generation can impose laws on future generations. Not only that, but it will keep legislators very busy determining whether to renew legislation or not, rather than always coming up with new problems to create and then solve.

To answer Lowkey, the sunset should be automatic, not selective.

 

Sounds good to me. If the legislature of jurisdiction didn't think that it was a crime anymore, why should the person be charged with it? As it stands now, people are being criminally charged for laws put on the books over a hundred years ago.

I work in software development as well, and i would not compare human beings to computers when it comes to the rules imposed on them. Legislatures are loathe to change existing rules. It's a lot of work, it will (*)(*)(*)(*) someone off, and there's rarely any political benefit to doing it.

 

Not because the legislature didn't think it was a crime, because (for example) a clerk missed a line in a document so that law never got it's annual rubber stamp so fell off the statue book.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has been charged based on a hundred year old law that has never been amended. Anyway, it's perfectly possible for a hundred year old law to have nothing wrong with it.

Exactly and this idea won't change that one bit. It will, as I said, become a pointless and expensive rubber stamping process that won't change anything. It could even discourage what little proactive assessment of old laws that happens currently.

If we want old laws to be assessed and repealed or updated as necessary, we need to get off our backsides and actually do something about it. A automatic system of expiry won't solve the problem.

 

Maybe the legislature shouldn't be in the business of defining crime and return that business to the courts. Anyway, I think that the value of eliminating bad law automatically through a sunset period (certainly not annually, 5 years is adequate) far outweighs the downside of the occasional clerk error. They can always double check, and, if some legislation expires, they can renew it, right? It's going to be easier to renew a popular rule than to eliminate an unpopular one.

If there's nothing wrong with it, then it shouldn't be difficult to renew it every 5 years.

It's not pointless at all. Legislators become responsible for legislation that they renew, particularly unpopular ones. Since expiring legislation is to be put to a vote, that means the floor can be opened to those who are opposed it to make their case. In order to do that now, the only way to express opposition to existing legislation is to get a legislator to present a new bill which must go to a committee where it will likely die.

I wouldn't call this "rubber stamping." It requires a vote and it's very democratic. Some legislation will pass without objection. Some won't.

It's not nearly as easy as you might think. My group put a great deal of effort to eliminate a healthcare district in California. Healthcare districts exist to help the government-run hospital in their district with funding. In my district at the time, the hospital was long gone but the board was still operating and getting a chunk of money every year which they felt they could do with as they pleased. One of the things that they did was vote to have every member of the board receive lifetime, free healthcare plans once on the board for 2 terms (4 years each.) They gave money away to favorite projects, and they spent about $600,000 on lawyers to prevent those in the community from fighting what they were doing. It's taken nearly 10 years, including getting people elected to that board, to finally get it shut down. Few people thought it served any purpose. There's another hospital board in the district that does a much better job. Yet, the long term board member fought tooth and nail, spending taxpayer money, to prevent their closure. The law was on their side in the sense that there was no provision for closing a district. Even though we got a majority vote on the board for closure, they couldn't find a way to actually do it. It finally had to go through a torturous process of going through another bureaucracy which oversees board formation and function.

http://www.fiercehealthfinance.com/story/hospital-district-wouldnt-die/2011-10-25

10 years to get one piece of worthless, expensive legislation kind of sort of eliminated even though it had popular support. Government doesn't give up power once obtained, and few laws are ever removed from the books. Right now gay men in Louisiana are being arrested for soliciting sex (not for money) because of a law on the books that the Supreme Court overturned but has not been removed. A sunset provision would have kept the cops busy with something else and a couple of elderly gay men who have harmed no one out of jail.

 

Brilliant proposal! It would solve a lot of problems.

 

I'd say yes if it also applies to the Constitution and forces us to have a Consitution Convention every generation or so.

 

nah, the constitution should be the only laws for which expiration doesn't apply. They are the laws the whole country is based upon and are there to give stability.

 

Which means it also ends up as outdated as some of the laws on the books.

 

except that the consitution is supposed to be the major laws only and they are seldom added to or changed. Are there many redunant and outdated laws in the constitution?

 

Excellent idea for the most part. I think there should be a "permanent" set of laws though, primarily in terms of violence, etc.

 

There's plenty of outdated language that should be updated, not to mention the massive ball of bull(*)(*)(*)(*) that is our election system.

 

Outdated language? That's something beautiful to preserve, not get rid of.

Good point about your sucky election system. It sucks indeed. But anyways, there needs to be some basic laws, ground laws, that aren't subject to the expiration law otherwise there'd just be chaos. Some stability is needed.