[codesforhugs]

If I were writing the constitution for a representative democracy today, I think it would include mandatory sunsets for all legislation.

Yes, this would lead to the legislature spending a lot of time just reauthorizing existing legislation, but I would argue that the majority of new legislation being passed in modern representative democracies would be better off as revamps of existing legislation anyway.

[icandoit]

Idaho does this. Through disfunction they repealed the entire state regulatory code in May of this year.

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/idaho-repeals-its...

[sjy]

Would you apply the same rule to a software codebase? Perhaps if nobody can be bothered refactoring that code, it’s not needed anymore and should just be deleted?

Sunset provisions are a pain for anyone who administers the law or makes plans for the future based on it. Laws that depend on the current date are bad, and stable legal institutions are good. That’s why we incrementally “reform” the law, rather than periodically replacing it like some depreciating asset.

[johnnyo]

This assumes you don’t have gridlock in the House/Senate, so it’s a bad idea.

We already have govt shutdowns when we can’t pass a budget, imagine if a law that legalized gay marriage was allowed to expire, or one that granted people health care or immigration status.

Even if a non-discrimination law only expired for a short period of time, that would be enough to do real damage to people’s lives.

[guntars]

Other countries have solved this issue simply by automatically forcing an election if a budget is not passed. Their representative are somehow able to overcome ideological differences and pass legislation once their jobs are on the line.

[johnnyo]

That doesn’t solve the problem because the idea here is that some laws should sunset, some shouldn’t.

When a civil rights law sunsets, lots of bad can happen in a short period of time.

I’m using the example of the government unable to agree on a budget as an analogy.

What happens when we can’t agree on how to renew the Civil Rights Act and it sunsets for a period of time?

[guntars]

If the civil rights act requires over 1/2 votes to extend it and it doesn't gather that much support, maybe it should sunset. The budget votes are different because they require 2/3 of the votes which is what allows the minority party to block it from passing.

[mschuster91]

The problem with this is that there may be laws that are highly valuable for poor people (e.g. minimum wage, workplace safety, building/fire codes), but irrelevant for rich people/politicians and thus end up way way down on the priority list compared to, let's say, budget laws or the next big tax cuts package.

A mandatory sunset provision can only work if the legislators act with the interests of their country and constituents first and their individual pockets second, which isn't the case any more in many Western democracies. The US are just the most obvious example where Republicans blocked everything Obama tried to pass through.

[codesforhugs]

Gridlock problems are particular to two party systems. A modern constitution would also include voting methods that don't result in a two party system.

You could also reduce the risk by the constitution itself being exempt from sunsetting and enumerating crucial rights and services therein.

Anyway it's not something that's ever going to be implemented anywhere, so it doesn't really matter if it could work.