This is why laws should sunset after some period of time, maybe 50 years, maybe 100 years. At that time they should be reviewed, debated again, and decisions made as to whether each law should be renewed as-is, revised, or (the default) allowed to lapse.
That's certainly an interesting idea, but i can imagine about 1000 different ways it could go wrong. Any sufficiently disruptive party could easily destroy the government just by preventing all laws from being reinstated. You could also just filibuster past the deadline for renewal to give your buds a couple days to break the law and then let it pass finally. You also would probably need a parallel bureaucracy just to handle the massively increased work load of governing.
Maybe with a new nation that had time to adapt to the scenario it could form a functional system, but if implemented in America today I'd give it a not insignificant chance of actually crashing the entire government like a computer attempting to open a zip bomb
Fair point. I'd like to think nobody would filibuster against popular laws such as those against murder, rape, theft, etc. but more that it's an opportunity for laws like "you can't sell a car on Sunday" or various controlled substance laws to quietly expire as public attitudes change.
Perhaps look at code refactoring as a model. Revising or rewriting code is often avoided because it is expensive and difficult. Applying existing test cases would have to be manual, not automated.
