Auto-expiry of laws is an interesting idea, and one that gets floated here on HN with some regularity (possibly because it appeals to the refactoring mindset?)
I wonder about "Chesterton's Fence" effects, though - maybe we'd have to make a _lot_ more use of the "institutional memory" of the non-political parts of government. Behind every law, there's usually at least some advisory recommendations / reports from various agencies, and over 10-30 year timescales there's a non-zero chance that some of the original authors of those are still around.
Otherwise, we'd run the "junior developer" risk of perpetually refactoring laws without understanding the reasoning behind them, and breaking functionality users depend on in the process. Sure, it's obvious that some blue law about not pasturing your cow on ye towne grasse on ye Holye Sundaye is outdated, but I suspect those obvious deprecation cases are few and far between. Thoughtful, context-aware refactoring applies to systems in general, not just computer systems.
Sounds nice in theory, but after decades of everything running smoothly, people forget just how instrumental certain laws were to ensure that stability.
It's a lot like anti-vaxers, anti-pasteurization, and other anti-science fads. And I can point to the repeal of banking regs like Glass-Steagall which resulted in the ~2007 financial crisis and recession. Including a post-it note on a law isn't going to give future people the same perspective as someone who lived through the issues first-hand. If that worked, we wouldn't have voters repeatedly supporting politicians who make the same insane promises that never work.
I wonder about "Chesterton's Fence" effects, though - maybe we'd have to make a _lot_ more use of the "institutional memory" of the non-political parts of government. Behind every law, there's usually at least some advisory recommendations / reports from various agencies, and over 10-30 year timescales there's a non-zero chance that some of the original authors of those are still around.
Otherwise, we'd run the "junior developer" risk of perpetually refactoring laws without understanding the reasoning behind them, and breaking functionality users depend on in the process. Sure, it's obvious that some blue law about not pasturing your cow on ye towne grasse on ye Holye Sundaye is outdated, but I suspect those obvious deprecation cases are few and far between. Thoughtful, context-aware refactoring applies to systems in general, not just computer systems.