Here’s a question for you. Shouldn’t laws expire? Potato chips expire. Hell, even honey has expiration dates (honey doesn’t go bad). Why shouldn’t laws?

I’m sure that you’ve seen lists of crazy laws that still exist simply because no one has ever gotten around to revoking them. For example, Law 27 on this page:

In Vermont, a wife needs the husband’s permission to wear false teeth.

In fact there’s a whole site called Dumb Laws.

Want another example of a law that should have disappeared long ago? In Paris, France, it was illegal for women to wear trousers until the law was revoked in 2013 (not saying that the law was enforced, but it existed).

I have perhaps more than a passing interest in this idea. One of the ideas that feeds my work-in-progress (hopefully to be a full-fledged novel in the near future) is what happens when you take the expiration of laws to the extreme — the constitution expiring and a new one not being ratified.

But what are your thoughts, is this a crazy idea or something that lawmakers should consider?