Scholars, lawmakers, and the general public have little understanding as to why some laws last a long period of time without the substantial amendment while others are either killed or substantially amended in a relative short period of time. What accounts for this difference? Are there certain tactics that Congress uses that increase the likelihood that a law will continue in its original form, unchanged by future Congresses? Are there conditions at the time of enactment that affect whether a law will live a long life? And what effect do subsequent conditions have? Do they influence the likelihood that a law will be amended in a significant way? In this project we build on and extend our earlier work (Maltzman and Shipan 2006; forthcoming) to examine why some laws are amended soon after passage while others remain untouched by future Congresses.
The importance of understanding how a law can be designed to have a long lasting impact cannot be overstated. First, the longer a law lasts before it is amended, the greater the potential to shape the nation's economic, social, and political welfare. Second, much of the value of legislation--to legislators, to interest groups, to the general public, and so on--comes from the assumption that the law itself will have longevity. When this original agreement is revised through future amendments, such changes affect the value of that law to the original participants. Third, compliance with the law depends in large part upon a calculation regarding its longevity. If one believes a law is likely to be either rescinded or revised, rational actors will abstain from investing in compliance. Finally, we live in a period when the general public, pundits, and even lawmakers recognize that Congress's capacity to address all of society's problems is limited. Part of this limit reflects two issues that are beyond the scope of our project--the extent of the nation's problems and normative issues regarding the proper role of government. At the same time, however, this limit may reflect the fact that our lawmaking institutions repeatedly are called upon to address issues that had been confronted earlier, by previous Congresses. Our project has the potential to limit the need for consistently revisiting the issues that confront the nation.
The importance and influence of public policies depend on their durability. Whereas some laws guide policy for decades, others have only a transitory influence on policy. Soon after enactment, they are swiftly amended and superseded by new law. Such amendments can come from either Congress or the judiciary. Despite such variance, ourunderstanding of the stability of public laws and the conditions that foster such variation is limited. What forces help to shape whether initial agreements among legislators endure or unravel? This question has received scant attention from lscholars, whose studies of policymaking typically focus on the dynamics of enacting laws rather than on what happens after enactment. In this project, my co-PI at the University of Michigan, a number of Michigan and GW students, and I explored how the politics of enactment shape both subsequent judicial interpretation and how elected officials in the future will act. Given the importance of durability and predictability to shaping outcomes, this research has consequential implications for understanding how legislation can best be crafted. In addition to benefiting our democratic processes, our project makes several contributions to the field of political science. First, although scholarly analysis has examined what happens to specific laws after they have been passed, ours is one of the first to draw systematic conclusions across laws. Second, our study is the first to carefully examine how conditions at the time of enactment (e.g., divided government, bipartisanship, etc.) affect the duration of laws. Contrary to some views that divided government has little effect on laws, we find that laws passed under divided government last for a shorter amount of time before they are amended. Third, we identify the conditions under which Congress is more likely to include provisions, such as sunset provisions or automatic indexing, that affect the duration of a law. Finally, we look at how activist courts take advantage of legislative ambiguity to alter the outcomes promulgated by elected officials.
