> Because right now for mere mortal it's impossible to find out if some law or paragraph is still in effect.

Where and how? Pretty sure our Federal and State Governments here in Australia publish the current in-force law (original Act amended with all amendments) - I assumed that was normal, do they not do that elsewhere?

See for example the Telecommunications Act (1997) [1] but current version amended to October 2025 (the most recent amendment). Then you click ‘All Versions’ and you can read any of the 116 or so versions back to the original in 1997.

1. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A05145/latest/text 2. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A05145/latest/versions

That would make some things more difficult. For the same reason we use Git to be able to work on multiple things at the same time.

Let’s say you have tax law and the particular law is thousands of paragraphs long. You have multiple changes to the law going on at the same time (totally unrelated stuff in different parts of the law). It’s going to be really hard now because each of the 15 changes need to update its own texts as soon as any other of the proposals get changed and it’s going to affect exactly which order they are voted on etc.

Much easier to just say propasal A changes paragaraph 33 and proposal B changes paragraph 475

I feel this sentiment. I think its a good one.

The approach I take is that every law should expire after a standard, unchangeable time - probably several terms of Congress, say 6 years to account for one full Senate turnover.

Congress can just repass verbatim old laws if they wish - its already written and can be a simple, fast vote. Or we can have debate over outdated provisions like we should have.

How would it work though?

Also, not sure what makes it so impossible (debates on whether a given law is in effect seem pretty rare, though it does exist), but that may depend on where you come from and the applicable legal system.

  * Laws of the Land
  * Laws of the Land - Final
  * Laws of the Land - Final 2
  * Copy of Laws of the Land - Final
  * Laws of the Land - Definitive Version 2026-04-29
  * Laws of the Land - Definitive Version 2026-04-29 with 11 o' clock amendments

that would slow down the process considerably. it would also not be of much use to the professionals, which i guess make up the majority of those involved most of the time, and so, i guess, would not have much support.

IMO a good middle ground could be attained by everyone having some understanding of the legal system. we could use school for that. i mean, we cover calculus and ancient history, it's not like covering law to some extent would be harder

Do you re-read the source code for your keyboard drivers each time you boot up the PC? If not, how can you as a mere mortal be expected to understand if some keys still work the same as yesterday?