God, no! How on earth is Congress supposed to re-read tens of thousands of statutes? It's a nice sentiment and certainly a principle that should get adopted for "temporary legislation/measures" but, generally speaking, it's hugely impractical.
How are you suppoed to enter into contracts if you don't know what the law of the land is going to be in four years time? Transaction costs would increase enormously.
"How on earth is Congress supposed to re-read tens of thousands of statutes? It's a nice sentiment and certainly a principle that should get adopted for "temporary legislation/measures" but, generally speaking, it's hugely impractical.
How are you supposed to enter into contracts if you don't know what the law of the land is going to be in four years time? Transaction costs would increase enormously."
Contracts are mostly based on Sate law. Also,some states have Sunset provisions and have a standard package of laws they pass at the beginning of each year.
As for the impracticality of so many thousands of statutes, that's rather the point.
As for passing a standard package of laws at the beginning of each year: Then why use sunset clauses at all, if legislators don't even think about it but just pass it along in one sweep every year?
I wholeheartedly agree that nearly every developed country is over-regulated, especially the US, having a different approach to regulating (narrowly worded, long statutes vs short, general principles) than some European legal traditions. Alas, the majority of people don't want to get strangled by regulations but at the same time want to have lots of industries regulated. I think the best shot is to inform them about the consequences of over-regulation.
I'm not sure. Every large enough system ends up needing a lot of boilerplate to tune it to work correctly. I think if such a law existed most decisions would go through the (non-elected) supreme court or some independent autarchys than through congress, and what would be sunseted each four years would be the statements creating such institutions.
I agree with you, except that I quibble that perhaps the Congress shouldn't have enacted "tens of thousands of statutes" in the first place.
Maybe just make them read all of them before getting on with business? I.e. something to motivate them to reduce the word count (without of course allowing unelected bureaucrats to take up the slack with regulations that have the force of law unless struck down in the courts).
Exactly. There are just way too many laws enacted currently, we need less. More than a few government agencies should likely be merged or just dissolved as well.
How are you suppoed to enter into contracts if you don't know what the law of the land is going to be in four years time? Transaction costs would increase enormously.