What makes a law a problem law
Disliking a law is not enough. Plenty of law is merely bad policy, and the movement is not a complaints box. A record enters this library only when it does something structural: it damages the mechanism by which citizens govern themselves.
The tests
A candidate has to do at least one of these, and the record has to say which:
- It withholds the public record. It lets an agency refuse, redact, or indefinitely delay material the public has a right to read, with no clock and no penalty for stonewalling.
- It exempts the writers. It applies a rule to the country and not to the body that passed it.
- It moves public money out of sight. It authorises spending, settlement, or transfer that is not attributable to a named decision-maker.
- It removes a check. It strips oversight, judicial review, or a required vote from a process that previously had one.
- It narrows the franchise or due process. It makes it harder to vote, to be heard, or to contest a decision.
- It hands access to someone unaccountable to the public. Foreign or private access to systems the public paid for and cannot inspect.
What is deliberately not a test
- Which party passed it. The library contains laws passed under both, and the badness rating has no party term in it anywhere.
- Whether it was unpopular. Unpopular and undemocratic are different claims. This library makes the second one.
- Whether we can prove the intent. We record what the law does. Intent is an argument; text and effect are the record.
The frozen key
Every record gets a key the first time it is created — a lowercase, underscored slug — and that key
never changes again. Titles can be improved, ratings can move, sources can be added. The key is the
identity, because a link somebody shared two years ago has to still resolve to the same law.