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mariusoryesterday at 2:07 PM5 repliesview on HN

I disagree on this one.

In the same way you can't be prosecuted twice for the same crime in the US system under the "double jeopardy" clause, there should be an equivalent system where the same law can't be pushed over and over until it passes.


Replies

labcomputeryesterday at 3:24 PM

Double jeopardy in the US means being prosecuted for the exact same crime more than once. It does not, however, prevent being prosecuted for similar or related crimes.

For instance, when local white juries would acquit white defendants in for lynching black people in the South, the federal government could (and did) try them again for the crime of violating the victim's civil rights. Same set of facts, but different crime. Not double jeopardy because they were being prosecuted for a different crime.

That doesn't work for legislation, because defining when a law is "the same" is basically impossible. If I change one word, is it the same? What if I "ship of Theseus" the law? At what point is it a different law?

Many legislatures ban members from repeatedly bring the same bill in the same session, which does require a similar determination. But that's a much weaker prohibition (even if the determination was wrong, you can always bring the law for a vote next year), and it is a necessary limitation to allow the legislature to get other work done without having members clog the process by bringing the same bill for a vote over and over again.

digitalPhonixyesterday at 2:15 PM

In many countries, it took multiple attempts to get gay marriage legalised. Having a double jeopardy type block for repeated attempts at passing laws would prevent social changes being captured in law.

Also it would be easy to weaponised by proposing something that doesn’t have enough support now so that it can never be passed in the future.

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pessimizeryesterday at 2:56 PM

And there is in most parliamentary law, but usually restricted to sessions. Additionally, there's usually a proscription against passing negative laws (i.e. "we will not do X"), meaning that when something passes it becomes law and needs a supermajority to repeal, but when it fails, all it needs is a majority to be passed (in the next session.)

The problem is that parliamentary law and democratic processes have ossified for the last 175 years, while "positive" bills have been passed to push more power to the executive, but can't be removed without supermajorities (that are now impossible because the executive has more power over elections and the schedule.) The last person to think seriously about parliamentary law was Thomas Jefferson, and he was really just encoding, organizing into a coherent system, and debugging Commons practice.

If you think that the US has pushed too much power into the Executive, you should look at recent history (since the 80s-90s) in Britain. The opposition has no power at all, and even backbenchers in government have no power at all. They've been reduced to hoping that the right marble gets pulled from a bowl that allows them to hopefully read a bill out loud that might get on tv that might get an article written about it that goes viral, that might put pressure on the government to do something about it.

The EU doesn't even have that level of democracy.

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Yeulyesterday at 4:31 PM

There are a bunch of people in my country who have been pushing against abortion rights for 50 years. So far they have never even come close.

Now I suppose theoretically one day all the other 100 members of parliament accidentally push the wrong button but it seems farfetched.

LtWorfyesterday at 2:12 PM

It would be nice, but they change it a little bit so it's technically a different law.