

UK Government asks: "Which laws would you like to see repealed?" - dotcoma
http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/

======
grellas
The sources of law are as varied as the institutions in place for promulgating
them. Some derive from charter documents such as constitutions and are
foundational to the society; others from judges deciding cases and setting
precedents that in turn affect future decisions; still others from the
statutory enactments of legislators who (at least in theory) are directly
accountable to voters and which enactments consist of laws aimed at dealing
with broad categories of problems and issues concerning the whole society,
such as tax systems, regulatory systems affecting commerce, and the like;
still others derive from regulatory bodies set up under the various statutory
schemes and charged with promulgating and sometimes enforcing detailed
regulations under the authorizing statutes, as for example detailed tax
regulations covering fine points of what does or does not qualify for a
particular deduction or helping to interpret the meaning of otherwise broad
language in a statute; still others come from local sources having nothing to
do with a national government, such as state governments, local municipalities
and the like; still others from international sources such as treaties adopted
by a national government; and still others from direct popular sources such as
systems authorized by state constitutions by which citizens can place
initiatives on a ballot for a popular vote (this breakdown refers to U.S. law
but applies generally to any form of Western-based system of modern
constitutional government, such as that in the U.K.).

Virtually all these sources of law are what might be called "top down" - that
is, once the mechanisms have been set up in a society that enable citizens to
have some form of say in how a government is constituted and how its laws are
enacted, the institutions take over and generate the laws going forward,
whether through legislators, judges, or regulators, and average people
basically get stuck with the results, having only limited recourse to do
anything about any of this directly except for the occasional vote at the
ballot box, participation in political campaigns, and the exercise of speech
rights aimed at influencing the political process.

Given this top-down nature of law (in general), a site such as this will
inherently have only limited value at best. The idea is to have politicians be
more connected with the citizenry and less "out of touch" by being able to
hear what ails average people and what they want changed. That is fine in
itself but, presumably, the ability of an average citizen to sound off
generally is already pretty substantial and especially in our modern age where
blogs and the like have substantially enhanced that ability. With social
media, many of the ideas coming from the citizenry can also take on a viral
impetus, magnifying their impact. And, thus, it should be no secret to
politicians what the big issues of the day generally are insofar as average
people are reacting to them. This sort of site, one would guess, would do
little to add anything meaningful to the knowledge base that politicians
already possess of what within the law agitates people and calls for some form
of change.

This sort of site might serve as a filtering mechanism by which the popular
pulse might be better measured than from a random sampling of popular opinion
but how is this any better than, say, a poll commissioned to sound out opinion
on any given issue (even assuming that the input can be meaningfully organized
so that it is not just random input from who knows what source)? If the site
gets countless complaints about a particularly oppressive law from civil
libertarians that business interests might support, or about overweening
regulations that businesses hate but civil libertarians support, what does
that add to the mix that is in any way meaningful? And how would this serve to
influence politicians who already have their own philosophy about such issues,
one way or the other? Do they listen to their boosters or to their detractors?
If to the detractors, how will this have an impact if the site is not designed
to afford any opportunity to make meaningful arguments that might persuade?
Even if it could serve to sway politicians in some way, how would this affect
the 90%+ of the laws that they don’t directly control (e.g., judge-made laws,
constitutional laws, bureaucratic regulations)?

I have no problem with participatory democracy and do believe that making
government more accessible to its citizens is a good thing. No one wants "top-
down" rule in any absolutist sense of tyranny and, in a free society, the more
accountable the politicians are to those who elect them the better.

But, given the realities of modern political institutions, the practical
effect of such a site would seem to be negligible except that it gives the
politicians promoting it an _appearance_ of wanting to reach out and be
responsive to average people. This in itself might have value but far more for
the politicians involved than for the citizens affected by their actions.

I hope this doesn't sound cynical but, viewed with a professional eye (i.e.,
as one who deals with law in many forms), the impact of this site as
structured on the law itself is very likely to be nil. Maybe with a different
approach the idea could be better implemented. As is, though, I would call it
more a stunt than anything else. Of course, I am not directly familiar with
the political realities of the U.K. and may be off on this - from a distance,
that is how I would assess it.

~~~
Gormo
Would you necessarily say that common law precedents are a form of top-down
law?

Since precedents are formed in the particulars of specific cases -- with the
parties involved in the case directly participating in the arguments brought
to the court -- and are then broadened and deepened as they are applied to
more and more cases, I would consider this the most bottom-up form of law.

Participatory democracy can be, and often is, much more of a top-down
proposition, and is largely responsible for the modern accumulation of
statutory cruft.

------
socksy
Firstly, I'm really impressed by the idea, and think it would be an excellent
way to have public feedback - if this had existed during washup, would the
digital economy bill (now act) have passed?

But I have a few reservations - no. 10 has had a petition part of their
website for years now - the problem was that any ideas that didn't fit with
the government's ideas already were ignored. Petitions with only hundreds of
signatures got noticed, those withtens of thousands got ignored. It's
perfectly possible that this will just be repeated in a different form.

If it does work, then we might get ill informed opinion taking precedence -
such as people voting against say road user charging without understanding the
true costs and benefits of the system... But that's always a problem with
democracy, so who knows how to solve that?

Also, there appears to be some technical issues with the site. There's no way
to class entries as duplicates, and as such there are already man redundant
posts - say on cannabis legalisation. When you rank by rating, they make the
mistake that Amazon make - one 5 star rating is worth more than 20 five star
ratings and 1 one star rating.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_Firstly, I'm really impressed by the idea, and think it would be an excellent
way to have public feedback - if this had existed during washup, would the
digital economy bill (now act) have passed?_

 _But I have a few reservations - no. 10 has had a petition part of their
website for years now - the problem was that any ideas that didn't fit with
the government's ideas already were ignored._

I think your second statement does a nice job of counter-acting your first.

Maybe I'm cynical, but this looks like a pretty shallow publicity ploy. I'd
love to see some real change come from this (or sites like this), but I'd be
shocked if it actually happened.

~~~
gaius
All that site promised was that anything with x (50,000 IIRC) votes would get
a personal reply from the PM.

The real test will be when the Countryside Alliance (disclosure: I am a
member) use the site to vote en masse for the repeal of the Hunting Act.

------
ErrantX
I'm steadily more and more impressed with the new government (which I was see
sawing over). I hope this is not simply a publicity stunt and is _really_ a
genuine move - because that would be really cool.

(as it is I think the coalition has weathered the new budget really well
considering it was always going to piss of, well, everyone :))

~~~
arethuza
Give them time, I liked Labour in '97. Now I would happily see Blair shipped
off to the ICC.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, Britain has a great ability to elect governments that actually bring
great (and usually very positive) change for the country. Then we reelect them
again, and they go from positive change to well-it-could-be-worse change, and
then we reelect them again and it goes to where-the-fuck-did-this-crap-come-
from change.

I'm sure this will be a very positive government in terms of its changes. Then
they'll have public support and will strong-arm whatever they want, and in
their third run of it (if they get one) they'll bastardize everything they do
and make people go running and screaming to try and get Labour back in power
to reverse the damages, just for the cycle to repeat.

It's like steering a car. A sober driver makes incremental changes and goes in
a straight line. England is like a drunk driver, we don't notice a problem
till its too late and we hard-swerve to get back on the road just to find
ourselves in oncoming traffic to swerve right back off the road.

------
Kliment
It's an interesting idea. It appears that laws accumulate (that is, there is
less friction to adopting new laws than there is to repealing old ones). Given
this, having a mandate from the people, so to say, might make it easier to
argue a repeal.

~~~
arethuza
I would like to see a delay in the implementation of laws that are introduced
in reaction to specific events (terrorism, dangerous dogs, Dunblane etc.).

Rather than having a knee jerk reaction to create new laws to "do something" -
the government should be able to propose new laws but these would sit in limbo
for a reasonably long time period (say 2 years) and then have to be voted on
again before they actually become law.

~~~
jamesbritt
Are there not cases where some event points out serious issues with the
current laws or conditions, where prompt action is required?

I'm much less concerned with laws passed in haste than I am with laws passed
for eternity. All laws should have a sunset clause, something very cumbersome
to override, so that two years or so down the line, if there's no longer a
strong case for a law, it goes off the books.

Having to constantly work to keep existing laws on the books would make it
harder to add new laws as well. (The downside is you _know_ this would lead to
lawyers trying to craft new laws that combined multiple existing laws, using
impenetrable language, leading to the point where we have just one law:
"Sorry, whatever it is you're doing is illegal.")

~~~
gaius
Well, a recent example is the banning of meow-meow after someone allegedly
died of it. The law was passed then a bit later the coroner reported that the
drug was nothing to do with it. A lot of people criminalized for no reason,
and instead of buying 99% pure drugs from the Internet, people instead bought
30% pure drugs cut with God knows what from a dodgy geezer in a club toilet in
Brixton. Nice one Nu Labour.

------
anigbrowl
Might be just window-dressing, but this Conservative/LibDem coalition
continues to surprise and impress me with their pragmatic approach to
governance.

------
mkramlich
The odd numbered ones. That would be a good start.

------
danudey
I think it's a great idea, but I'm not 100% sure the UK has the authority
necessary to repeal the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

[http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/repealing-unnecessary-
laws/rep...](http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/repealing-unnecessary-laws/repeal-
the-2nd-law-of-thermodynamics-1)

~~~
JacobAldridge
That would resolve the fossil fuel / global warming issue - quite a coup for
the new government!

------
gojomo
I have a somewhat related idea. For every law now on the books, and every
individual paragraph of those laws, I'd like a site where citizens and
politicians, under their true names, can log their _support_ or _opposition_
to that clause.

Obsolete clauses, and those that exist only for the narrow interest of just
one or a few campaign donors, should then stick out like sore thumbs -- with
either no one supporting them, or only obvious stooges (eg paid lobbyists).
Those without a certain baseline of continuing support would automatically
expire after a certain period. (Clauses wouldn't individually require majority
support -- just _some_ support so that some true person is accountable for
explaining why such handouts exist/persist.)

The same process could also be applied to bills under consideration.

~~~
Empact
Is a system in which a large number of citizens must be intimately aware of
the intricacies of a huge and complex set of legal code a well-factored
system? Isn't that a bit like the passengers of an airplane instructing the
pilot on how to fly?

Under our current system in the U.S., not even the representatives and
senators themselves write, let alone read the legislation they're voting on
([http://www.govtrackinsider.com/articles/2010-03-24/whowrites...](http://www.govtrackinsider.com/articles/2010-03-24/whowritesbills)).
The lay-person has far more personal challenges to address (e.g. family,
career) than educating themselves in legal-speak in order to comprehend legal
code itself.[1]

Better, I think to use causes to abstract and simplify the underlying
legislation, as I'm attempting to do in <http://votereports.org> \- which is
akin to telling the pilot where you want to go, rather than how to fly.

Incidentally, there are a number of sites which enable you to indicate support
for bills under consideration, to varying effect, including votereports,
lawilike on facebook, visiblevote, opencongress, newballot and certainly
others.

\---

[1] As it is, media and bloggers don't even link to the bills they write
about: <http://infovegan.com/2010/06/19/bloggers-and-bills/>. Personally I
take this to be an indication of how little demand for and comprehension of
this info on the reader side.

~~~
gyardley
_Is a system in which a large number of citizens must be intimately aware of
the intricacies of a huge and complex set of legal code a well-factored
system? Isn't that a bit like the passengers of an airplane instructing the
pilot on how to fly?_

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from James Madison, from
Federalist Paper #62:

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of
their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so
incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised
before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man,
who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is
defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little
known, and less fixed?"

In my opinion, Madison was as correct now as he was then.

~~~
tptacek
That sounds nice and tidy, but it seems hard to fit the requirements of e.g.
the EPA or the erstwhile MMS or the CFTC into something coherent enough to be
understood by a lay person.

Simplicity and fairness and effectiveness are all in tension with each other.

------
petercooper
Channel 4 hit the streets in a "ask the public" bit a month ago when this idea
was first floated. They asked a bunch of people what laws they'd want to
repeal. No-one came up with _any_ ideas. Lots of shrugging and "hmm, you need
laws otherwise there'll be anarchy!" type comments.

The only "idea" someone came up with was (and I paraphrase heavily, since it
was a while ago): "You know those hood things the Muslims wear? They should
ban those because you can't see who you're talking to." When the reporter
noted that this was creating a new law rather than removing an existing one,
the response was, "Oh yeah.. you're right!"

This policy is a shriveled vegetarian sausage thrown at a collectively dim,
politically unaware and undeserving populace. It'll end up mushed into the
ground and forgotten within months.

------
j_baker
Sigh. This makes me wish I lived in the UK. Look what happened when they tried
that here in the US: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/05/25/AR2010052504396.html)

------
MikeCapone
I'd like to see that happen in all countries. It a great democratic exercise,
and with modern communication technologies, it's now a lot easier to do than
before.

I don't have any illusions that it will change society much, but it probably
can't hurt too much either.

~~~
Gormo
I'd actually like to see a constitutional amendment in the US that puts a
fixed, mandatory sunset provision on all legislative acts.

Legislatures would be required to positively reaffirm any existing statutory
laws within a mandated interval before their expiration in order for them to
remain in force.

This would alter the political incentives just enough to allow a great deal of
bad policy to expire quietly without legislators risking the consequences of
being actively engaged in a repeal campaign.

~~~
eru
Also it would keep legislators busy with the old laws, instead of making up
new ones all the time.

Just make sure that re-affirming old laws takes some effort.

However I wonder how businesses would react to the uncertainties of certain
laws expiring, just because the nation is not in a mood to re-affirm them?

~~~
Gormo
I resume there'd be a strong tendency toward maintaining the stability of
commercial law, where needed, and preference for common law and equity above
statutes. I guess for the same reasons so many companies choose to incorporate
in Delaware today.

~~~
pmccool
Given the increased power of the judiciary in this scenario, what should be
done about bad judicial precedents? I can't see a sunset clause working there.

------
axod
This is excellent to see. After so many years of labour adding red tape on top
of red tape, interfering more and more into our lives down to the very last
detail.

Refreshing to see this happening.

~~~
hga
Much more than red tape: a few year ago, I read that NuLabour had been
creating crimes at the rate of one a day....

------
joubert
I am more impressed by the Swiss system:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#Direct_democracy>

~~~
shikhar
really? after they banned minarets that way?

------
ww520
This is a great idea. All jurisdictions should have something like this.

Someone should build a generic webapp to host this to let people post and vote
the law to repeal. I'm sure you can get a government grant somewhere to
bootstrap the site.

------
furyg3
Seems like formalizing a constitution would be a good place to start...

Finding out which laws violate your rights is pretty difficult if you don't
have one.

~~~
dmm
[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/02/gentle-...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/02/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html)

""" Britain, of course, is famous for its unwritten constitution - a phrase
which strikes the worm-gnawed American brain as oxymoronic. In fact, unwritten
constitution is a tautology. It is our written constitution - or large-C
Constitution - which is a concept comical, impossible, and fundamentally
fraudulent. Please allow me to explain.

England had a constitution well before America had a Constitution, and De
Quincey (whose political journalism is remarkably underrated) defines the
concept succinctly:

    
    
        ...the equilibrium of forces in a political system, as recognised and fixed by distinct political acts...
    

In other words, a government's constitution (small c) is its actual structure
of power. The constitution is the process by which the government formulates
its decisions. When we ask why government G made decision D1 to take action
A1, or decision D2 not to take action A2, we inquire as to its constitution.
"""

~~~
jerf
Every politically-interested hacker should read that entire series of posts.
It's the closest you can get right now to reading a history of the past couple
hundred years from a 23rd century perspective, in the sense of "one you will
find completely different", a perspective in which an obsession with democracy
may be seen as quaint as we now perceive monarchies. For me, the point is less
whether he convinces you he is correct in every particular than getting
exposed to a truly _different_ perspective.

------
SkyMarshal
I am shocked, shocked to find politicians even considering offering to repeal
unnecessary or overly restrictive laws. Is this a first in human history?

~~~
s-phi-nl
If you meant the question seriously, I think the Twenty-First Amendment to the
US Constitution is a prior example.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Ah, right, forgot about that one. Nearly 80 years ago, though, so still a
pretty rare thing.

------
patrickk
Crowd sourcing policy decisions. This could be the shiny new face of democracy
(hyperbole noted)

------
mcantelon
A garbage collection process should be a feature of all governments.

------
known
Repeal immigration laws.

------
erlanger
Answer and be ignored. Like the "Ask Obama" questions!

~~~
dotcoma
well, maybe. But you can pull this trick once only.

If this is what is going to happen, the next President or Prime Minister who
will want to do something similar will have to promise he will follow through,
or he/she will be made fun of.

~~~
anamax
> But you can pull this trick once only.

Nope. You can pull it again and again. Some folks will notice but they'll be
ignored because folks really want to believe.

As the song goes "And I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again"
but you know how that ended....

For example, the last time immigration was a hot topic in the US, we passed an
amnesty together with a promise to secure the borders so there wouldn't be an
explosion of illegal immigration. The result was an amnesty and no change in
enforcement, so there was an explosion in illegal immigration because the
"huddled masses yearning to mow lawns" rightly figured out that there'd be
calls for another amnesty. And yes, the amnesty advocates are promising
enforcement this time too. (The more honest are saying that they won't offer
enforcement first because they can't get amnesty if enforcement works.)

~~~
weavejester
_"Some folks will notice but they'll be ignored because folks really want to
believe."_

The UK doesn't really have a significant number of people who vocally and
unwaveringly support particular political parties. This may be because there
is a greater proportion of political cynics in the UK, or perhaps it merely
appears that way because of our smaller population.

Regardless, the way politicians are portrayed in the media, and the general
perception of politicians in general, is almost entirely negative.

~~~
anamax
> The UK doesn't really have a significant number of people who vocally and
> unwaveringly support particular political parties.

Oh really? Half of the Labor/Conservative vote isn't reliable?

In any event, the belief at issue need not be in a political party but in
"what govt does".

~~~
weavejester
_"Oh really? Half of the Labor/Conservative vote isn't reliable?"_

No; but people vote for what they consider the least worst option, not because
they actually like the politicians. There's certainly very little vocal
support for them!

