netmouse | Why does Congress make laws that expire?

This year we saw a lot of drama around whether or not Congress would renew an expiring ruling onthe interest rates for student loans. Then a line from an article on the recent Colorado Shooting caught my eye:

The AR-15 rife carried by Holmes, a civilian semi-automatic version of the military M-16, would have been defined as a “semiautomatic assault weapon” under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 — which expired in 2004. “The type of ammunition magazine Holmes is accused of using was banned for new production under the old federal assault weapon ban.” Though once it expired, “gun manufacturers flooded the market with the type of high-capacity magazines Holmes used Friday.”

If we at one point thought it made sense to ban assault weapons for private ownership, why was that ban part of a law set to expire? why not make laws and then, when and if someone decides they no longer make sense, let them repeal them or make new laws? Expiration dates on sseem rather arbitrary and therefore nonsensical.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sometimes, the votes might not be there to pass a permanent law, but by making some parts of it temporary, a bill's sponsors can bring a few more on board to get it passed. For examples on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum, consider the Patriot act, or the Bush-era tax cuts.

When a law is only able to pass very narrowly, that generally means that the country is conflicted about it; it's not universally accepted as a good law. But the way our legislative process works means that laws, once passed, have a lot of inertia; it takes a lot of effort to revise or repeal them even if they turn out to have been bad laws, especially if the special interest they favor starts lobbying to preserve them (think about farm subsidies).

I actually think that it would be a good idea if all laws automatically expired in, say, 20 years, unless passed by some level of supermajority. That way, outdated and controversial laws would get phased out over time unless agreement could be reached that they were really good ideas.

The bush era tax cuts had to meet revenue requirements/timelines to be passed in the senate and avoid a filibuster, I think...

The Bush tax cuts actually expire due to a "hard" rule (after a quick Google check to make sure of terms, you can call it the Byrd Rule to Reconciliation); in order to pass budget/monetary changes without dealing with amendments and fillbusters, there's a rule that says you can get certain laws pushed through without having to file closure -- but those laws have to pass a close check against the rules allowing such, AND have to expire after 10 years max. So it's not the same case as with the Brady bill, but the Byrd rule might have inspired the timeframe of the Brady bill's time-limited sections.

CompliCAted. (thanks for the explanation)

Any chance we can convince you to run for public office sometime?

But doesn't legal precedent, as upheld by the courts, stand until overturned? It seems to me the legal system is slanted toward being slow-moving and building consistencies people can rely on, yet these expiration dates create sudden changes.

But doesn't legal precedent, as upheld by the courts, stand until overturned?

Generally, but if the law has changed, a court may decide that a precedent no longer applies, and ignore it. On appeal, higher courts will decide if the lower court was right to do so. The legal system has always had to deal with the laws changing underneath it; it's not an unusual thing.

It seems to me the legal system is slanted toward being slow-moving and building consistencies people can rely on, yet these expiration dates create sudden changes.

I don't think that's a problem, though; the expiration dates aren't a secret, and companies and people can plan for them, as can judges and bureaucrats.

Yeah? Is there a place where the public can easily go to find out what laws are expiring this year? Or next year?

Easily? Probably not, but that's a general reflection of the way our laws are insufficiently indexed, and not specific to their having expiration dates. The laws themselves are public, so such an index could be created. There probably is one already somewhere, because reporters and analysts regularly field stories and reports about upcoming expirations. And if laws had a standard built-in expiration, it would be easy; just list all the laws that passed 20 years ago (or whatever the period was), with less than the permanence threshold.

Hmmm...it appears I'm not the first one to suggest this.

Why does Congress make laws that expire?

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