Arrested for flying flag upside down

[Russell Kanning]

This is why I hate old laws that are "no longer enforced".
That is until it conveniences the state.
All laws should have to come up for review every 5 years or something.

that is a good idea ... or every law could disappear after 5 years unless they go through the trouble of making a new one

[Ron Helwig]

that is a good idea ... or every law could disappear after 5 years unless they go through the trouble of making a new one

For a long time I've thought that there should be a 20 year sunset on every law, so that each generation has a say in what laws they live under. (For those who live "under law"  )

[KJM]

It's enough of a pain for the layperson to try and read and interpret all of the many laws of their town, county, state, and nation even without  irrelevant, unenforceable, and unconstitutional laws cluttering everything up.  I've also been of the mind that all statutory law should have some sort of sunset provision, or that it should at least be the norm, not the exception.  The only question would be the length between reviews/renewals; my opinion is that the larger the jurisdiction, the shorter the sunset clause.

Local laws (municipalities and counties) should be easier to evade, change, or ignore in the case of lousy legislation, allowing for a longer period of effect. For wider reaching laws (state and federal), it would be more appropriate to have a faster turn around time since: it wouldn't be nearly as easy to just move to another jurisdiction to avoid the law, your vote to elect someone to repeal such a law would be greatly diluted, and poorly written law could affect an enormous amount of people.  Due to the issue of how long a certain set of rules needs to be in place before being able to effectively measure success and decide on renewal or abandonment, I've declined to come up with exact figures for each level of government, although Ron's idea of a generation sounds appropriate for local laws.

After browsing the online NH state statutes I was happy to notice so many empty (repealed) sections. I don't know how it fares versus other states since the only other ones I've read are those from my home state of Texas, but I'm hoping that's a good sign for those of us wanting to do a little more trimming.

[J’raxis 270145]

It's enough of a pain for the layperson to try and read and interpret all of the many laws of their town, county, state, and nation even without  irrelevant, unenforceable, and unconstitutional laws cluttering everything up.  I've also been of the mind that all statutory law should have some sort of sunset provision, or that it should at least be the norm, not the exception.  The only question would be the length between reviews/renewals; my opinion is that the larger the jurisdiction, the shorter the sunset clause.

Local laws (municipalities and counties) should be easier to evade, change, or ignore in the case of lousy legislation, allowing for a longer period of effect. For wider reaching laws (state and federal), it would be more appropriate to have a faster turn around time since: it wouldn't be nearly as easy to just move to another jurisdiction to avoid the law, your vote to elect someone to repeal such a law would be greatly diluted, and poorly written law could affect an enormous amount of people.  Due to the issue of how long a certain set of rules needs to be in place before being able to effectively measure success and decide on renewal or abandonment, I've declined to come up with exact figures for each level of government, although Ron's idea of a generation sounds appropriate for local laws.

After browsing the online NH state statutes I was happy to notice so many empty (repealed) sections. I don't know how it fares versus other states since the only other ones I've read are those from my home state of Texas, but I'm hoping that's a good sign for those of us wanting to do a little more trimming.

A lot of the stuff that was repealed was replaced elsewhere. For example, check out the headings under "public justice" and note that similar, and often worse, laws have replaced them under the criminal code.