The admission tests

The Good Law List is short for the same reason the problem law list is short: it is the input to a number the movement publishes about named living people. Every addition changes what we say about somebody, so admission is hard and public.

The eight tests

1. repeal — it removes or guts a law already on the problem list. The cleanest possible case.
2. restore — it puts back a check that was removed: oversight, judicial review, a required vote.
3. transparency — it forces production of a public record, with a clock and a consequence.
4. accountability — it attaches a real cost to a named decision-maker who fails a duty.
5. franchise — it protects or widens the ability to vote and have that vote counted.
6. due_process — it protects the ability to be heard and to contest a decision that binds you.
7. speech — it protects the ability to say so, including about the government.
8. purse — it makes public money attributable to a named decision.

What is not a test

Whether the movement likes the policy. Good tax policy is not a good law in this sense. This list is about the mechanism of self-government, not about outcomes we prefer. That constraint is what lets citizens who disagree about almost everything still agree on this list — and it is checked, out loud, every time something is proposed for admission.

Which party filed it. The list contains bills filed from both directions, and the goodness rating has no party term.

The goodness rating and what the citizen vote does

Each record carries a goodness rating from 1 to 100 — how much repair it delivers. Citizens vote on it, and as with problem laws, the vote orders the list; it does not move the rating that feeds the arithmetic. Ordering is what citizens should control. Silently reweighting a published number about a living person by popular vote is not.