Law a in a democratic society supposedly reflect the values of the time. But as we all know, society’s values change over time. Should old laws be required to undergo a relevance review?
One arbitrary take that might be easy to support is that all laws have a set or maximum expiration date (say, 20 years), unless they are reaffirmed by the legislature at that time. This would periodically wipe off the books irrelvant laws like the fact that cars can’t be sold on Sundays in Pennsylvania.
But a people’s government could increase transparency and eliminate the arbitrary parity between current values and old laws by instituting a perpetual vote. That is, technology has made readily available the ability to change votes from a static point in time to a dynamically evolving process.
What if every current laws was posted online with a list of every legislatures current vote on the matter? At any time Congressman Joe Snuffy could log on to his legislature account and flip the toggle switch from yay to nay. In the process of a newly elected legislator taking office, he or she would have to update their support for every law. At any time new information is discovered or the values of society change, lawmakers could swing their vote in one direction or another. If support ever fell below the required margin, the law would go dormant until it regained support or until its support fell to zero and it automatically dropped off the list of current laws.
This would hold current lawmakers accountable for laws they didn’t pass, but only they have the power to revoke. Whether sloth, or fear, or corruption, or some other reason, too many of these obsolete laws allow lawmakers of the past to continue to exert unnecessary influence on the people of today.
Of course changes of this nature would probably require changes to our constitution itself. Speaking of old laws that could benefit from a relevance review…
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