Comment by mariusor
1 day ago
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.
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.
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.
You're fighting a strawman there I think. He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years.
>He said nothing about it then never being possible to propose a law. A reasonable cool-down period to ensure politicians can't simply exploit the fatigue of the public would be reasonable - perhaps 10 or 12 years.
So if gay marriage or weed legalization was defeated in 2015 you shouldn't be able to have a go at it until 2025? Or if YIMBY zoning reforms or AI regulation were defeated in 2025 you shouldn't be able try again until 2035?
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That's not double jeopardy then
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_jeopardy
The clause in the US constitution specifically has no time limits and it looks like it's the same for all the countries listed on wiki.
>perhaps 10 or 12 years
So if party A votes down proposal X and the next election party B that publicly supports it wins they shouldn't be allowed to propose that law?
Logical conclusion would be for the governing party to get some stooge to propose all the policies they oppose, get them far enough to the voting stage and reject them. Now your opponents can't do anything even if you lose the next election...
Of course doesn't really apply to pseudo-democratic institutions like the EU..
He did make a reference to the double jeopardy law in the US though which, if I'm not mistaken, explicitly prohibits exactly that type of behaviour.
That would be a boon to the conservative movements, for sure. And also ensure that almost nothing gets done unless it is extremely populist.
That's brilliant. Chat control discussions should totally get derrailed to gay marriage and weed legalization.
Heh? Are examples not used in your culture?
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.
Interesting seeing people downvoting this. I mean this is literally what happened after Brexit:
> you should look at recent history (since the 80s-90s) in Britain .. and even backbenchers in government have no power at all
All pro EU Conservatives were forced to either get in line or commit political suicide since local party constituencies aren't allowed to pick their representatives. US at least has primaries...
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.
It would be nice, but they change it a little bit so it's technically a different law.