Laws must not be rigid monuments to past mistakes, but living principles, able to evolve as society does. The longer a bad law stays in place, the more damage it does.
The modern legal system, in all its grandeur, is built on the illusion of permanence. Laws are drafted in painstaking detail, debated endlessly, and then set in stone as if human society were a finished product rather than a living process. The result is a tangle of outdated, contradictory, and unjust rules that remain on the books long after they have outlived
their usefulness.
Some laws in the United States from the 1800s are still on the books. In Michigan, a woman is not to cut her own hair without her husband’s permission. In Alabama, you may not wear a fake mustache in church if it causes laughter. But the real harm isn’t in these absurd relics—it’s in the serious laws that no longer reflect reality. Laws criminalizing marijuana possession have destroyed millions of lives even as public opinion shifted. Tax codes written decades ago allow billionaires to pay nothing while working people shoulder the burden.
Laws governing technology are hopelessly outdated, written in an era before AI, the internet, or mass surveillance. The Electoral College, established by the Constitution, declares a new President to be the one who lost by over three million votes—and unless you live in a swing state your vote doesn’t matter.
The slowness of legal change is not an accident. It is by design. Laws are made difficult to change because those in power benefit from inertia. The longer a bad law stays in place, the more entrenched its defenders become. Industries arise around obsolete regulations, and entire bureaucracies exist to enforce them. Change is discouraged not because the laws are good, but because altering them would upset those who profit from the status quo.
This is not how law functioned in societies that endured for centuries. Among the Cherokee, laws were subject to regular council meetings where the entire community could challenge them. The !Kung of the Kalahari Basin adjusted their rules through ongoing discussions, ensuring their laws never became oppressive. Even in medieval Europe, customary law allowed for constant reinterpretation based on changing circumstances. These systems recognized a simple truth: a law that cannot be questioned will inevitably become a weapon against the people it was meant to serve.
Rigid legal systems eventually collapse under their own weight. The Byzantine Empire, famous for its overcomplicated and inflexible laws, was ultimately crushed by its own bureaucracy. The French monarchy, with its maze of aristocratic privileges and outdated statutes, fell because it refused to adapt to the needs of its people. The Soviet Union, drowning in a sea of contradictory laws and unchecked state power, imploded under the pressure of its own rigidity. These examples all point to the same conclusion: civilizations that cannot change their laws quickly will not survive long enough to regret it.
If laws were as easy to repeal as they are to create, injustice would not linger for generations. If legislators were forced to regularly justify every statute they passed, they might write fewer, better laws. If the public had a direct mechanism to discard outdated rules, society would be far more dynamic, responsive, and fair. The longer a bad law remains in place, the more it becomes a permanent scar on the body of civilization.
Therefore, under Folklaw:
No law may be written in such a way that it becomes difficult to repeal. Every law must include a provision for its own review and expiration unless actively renewed by the people. Any law that no longer serves the common good must be discarded, lest it become a shackle on the living.
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