#8: Add a sunset provision to every new law
A doctor writes a prescription not forever, but for a set period of time. After that time, the prescription can be renewed or it can expire. Clothing is the same way -- you may be the same individual the whole time, but the same clothes aren't appropriate when you're four and when you're 40. As conditions change and evolve, so do the responses to those conditions. But law is built in part upon its stability -- but that stability can too easily become ossification, which is the slow death of a vibrant market.
If it really has to be permanent, it should be in the state Constitution
Everything else should be subject to review. The time horizons may vary: 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, or 200 years. But the very act of thinking about how long a law is expected to endure forces one to think about those laws differently.
Legislators should be accountable not only for what they actively do, but for what they passively condone
Milk goes bad, visitors need to leave after three days, and Presidents have term limits -- it's not as though we aren't familiar with the concept of expiration dates . Will it make more work for state lawmakers? Absolutely. And don't we deserve representatives who caer enough to review the laws they set? A doctor who never keeps up on current medical research and literature is professionally negligent; our government is the same if it is not forever cleaning up its old work.
If it really has to be permanent, it should be in the state Constitution
Everything else should be subject to review. The time horizons may vary: 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, or 200 years. But the very act of thinking about how long a law is expected to endure forces one to think about those laws differently.
Legislators should be accountable not only for what they actively do, but for what they passively condone
Milk goes bad, visitors need to leave after three days, and Presidents have term limits -- it's not as though we aren't familiar with the concept of expiration dates . Will it make more work for state lawmakers? Absolutely. And don't we deserve representatives who caer enough to review the laws they set? A doctor who never keeps up on current medical research and literature is professionally negligent; our government is the same if it is not forever cleaning up its old work.
- What government should do:
- What individuals should do:
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