[guizzy]

More "democracy", where you must win every time and the issue will keep coming up again and again, but if you lose once whoops the matter will never find its way back onto the docket and you will never get a chance to have it reversed.

[fauigerzigerk]

There are certain protections against the government of the day taking away fundamental rights with a simple majority. In the EU, these constitutional principles are enshrined in the treaties that can only be changed unanimously.

On that basis, the highest EU court (CJEU) has ruled several times that mass surveillance is unlawful. Governments are still trying to find a way around these protections, but it's not a certainty that whatever ultimately passes parliament will hold up in court.

[rdm_blackhole]

What you failed to mention was that the rulings against data retention for example which were indeed invalidated by the European court happened 8 years after the fact.

So what do we do for 8 years while the courts decide which side is right?

[abecedarius]

Several replies say passing and repealing legislation (and regulation) is technically symmetrical. Who really thinks that's more than technically true?

[JumpCrisscross]

> if you lose once whoops the matter will never find its way back onto the docket and you will never get a chance to have it reversed

The same dynamics govern passage as reversal. You keep trying until they slip up.

[ksynwa]

Yeah but these people make laws for a living while ordinary people are usually busy trying to feed their families.

[blackeyeblitzar]

And this is the main problem. Lawmakers and corporate/nonprofit/activist groups (who write bills for them) just repeatedly abuse the system in violation of unwritten democratic norms to get their way. I see this over and over where I’ve lived (blue states), for example with unconstitutional gun control laws that rely on exhausting opponents or waiting for them to not pay attention. The worst are when they submit bills with no text and substitute the text in at the last minute (so no one can oppose it earlier) with a late night weekend vote soon after. Or when they label everything an emergency measure (which makes it immune to reversal from voter initiatives in some states).

[achenet]

Probably a bad counter example but:

Abortion got reversed recently.

[samatman]

Which is why laws should be made through legislation, not judicial fiat. The majority in Dobbs v. Jackson made it very clear that a law requiring the same principle as Roe v. Wade would be legitimate.

[haswell]

This is life. Most of the things humans value require constant effort and maintenance. And things are reversed all the time.

[somenameforme]

Can you think of literally any law in modern times that granted a government significant power, yet was proactively reversed (as opposed to the handful of laws that were made with time limitations and allowed to expire)?

[username332211]

> but if you lose once whoops the matter will never find its way back onto the docket and you will never get a chance to have it reversed.

Why? It's normal legislation, it can be repealed the same way it's passed.

The EU doesn't pass legislation trough it's supreme court.