This is just a general observation.
Every year the legislature convenes to make new laws about this n' that.
It seems to me that after hundreds of years of making new laws, there would be a law against anything and everything.

Maybe the legislators should spend a portion of their time getting rid of old outdated laws.
Kind of like when the pumper truck comes around to suck the crap out of a cesspool.

---end of rant----

This is just a general observation.
Every year the legislature convenes to make new laws about this n' that.
It seems to me that after hundreds of years of making new laws, there would be a law against anything and everything.

Maybe the legislators should spend a portion of their time getting rid of old outdated laws.
Kind of like when the pumper truck comes around to suck the crap out of a cesspool.

---end of rant----

Funny how CA"s handgun roster, in order to add a new one, you have to delete one or a few first. 

But no, laws generally don't expire.  I say generally cause HI's law on any firearm violation even a misdemeanor, you have your 2a right taken away for 20 years. So I guess in 20 years, that part of the law expires on someone.

Thomas Jefferson has some interesting things to say about this.

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison 1 6 Sept. 1789

The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government.

///

...it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.--It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law has been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.



I interpret this as more of a rhetorical, hypothetical musing than a philosophical conclusion. Interesting thought though.

This is just a general observation.
Every year the legislature convenes to make new laws about this n' that.
It seems to me that after hundreds of years of making new laws, there would be a law against anything and everything.

Maybe the legislators should spend a portion of their time getting rid of old outdated laws.
Kind of like when the pumper truck comes around to suck the crap out of a cesspool.

---end of rant----

Some laws have sunset provisions but generally laws don't expire.
I think that for a large percentage of laws, there is no removal because their purpose doesn't go away. So for example things we consider crimes don't change much and there is not much erasing needed, just tweeking to update.

Some laws are just no longer applicable anywhere so they exist on the books but since they don't affect anything people don't put in effort to remove them.

I agree with your sentiments though.