One of our area lawmakers tweeted a photo this week, showing his shiny new 2021 Code of Iowa…the set of bound volumes which contain the laws of the state…916 chapters, now contained in no fewer than 8 volumes.
I have a copy of the Code of Iowa from 1919 in my office at home…doesn’t take up much space, one volume. I first saw a set in 1973, two volumes but they were admittedly unwieldy and far too large. A few years later, the two became three…by the time I became a lawyer in 1988, we had four volumes…and now, 30 years later, double that amount.
The freshman lawmaker posted that photo with the comment, “I’m wondering if we really need to keep adding to it, or should we find ways to pare it down?”
What a great chance for me to repeat an idea I’ve had for decades in that regard.
A moratorium on passing any new laws…until we’ve gone through and pared down what we have. In other words…every law in the book has to survive a fresh look and vote.
That was more practical with four volumes…eight will take a while. That’s alright, I’m fine with saying that we start the next session, 2022, by reviewing the first two volumes of the code…and do nothing else until we’ve whittled that down appropriately. The next year, volumes three and four…and so on. Sure, it’s going to take two full legislative general assemblies…but maybe, just maybe, we can be smarter about things with fewer laws and fewer words.
Of course, things are more complicated now than when the first ten laws were handed down…the Ten Commandments…but from two stone tablets, to eight bound volumes seems like perhaps a bit much.
