I wish to publicly apologise for my earlier outrage regarding the rumour that some laws were in the process of being scrapped. Fortunately, they were just rumours, but I certainly overreacted to them, instead of validating if they were truth or not.
They most certainly weren't. I have been assured that no laws were being scrapped; rather the contrary, to anyone who bothered to ask the SC, instead of blindingly trusting the rumours — like I unfortunately did — they would have heard precisely the opposite.
Still, it's clear that many laws require interpretation, and, most importantly, a thorough revision. But there is also a question of the underlying philosophy behind those laws. And for that, again, I will have to return to some historical background...
When the CDS began, as far as I remember, there were very few citizens who actually had any experience in writing laws or regulations. In fact, the whole idea of needing 'professionals' to do that would have been abhorrent; we were supposed to be able to handle self-government, that was the whole point of the CDS! But of course this also meant that we would — and did — make mistakes. Sometimes with the best of intentions. Often due to ignorance. And sometimes, well, there was just plain sloppiness.
At the very beginning, this was something that was expected to happen. Therefore, as a counter-balance to the RA, which could write laws in any way they wished, there was the SC, who would suggest revisions and corrections to make sure the laws not only made sense, but that they complied with the Constitution, the founding documents, and earlier laws. The SC itself would obviously not write new laws! They would just act as, uh, a 'revision body', validating that the laws made sense and were applicable. Also, the SC's formal name is still the 'Philosophical Branch'. Some laws require a rethinking of the mindset, and that required some philosophical discussion around what made sense for us. For example, the original intent of the CDS was that there should not exist an Executive, ever, because of the fear that a single individual would hold too much power. As time passed, it was however quite clear that it was impossible to run the whole of the CDS on a daily basis by 'rule by committee' — and in the early days, the RA was 'almost permanently' in session, it was not unusual to have 2-3 meetings per week, each lasting often some 4 hours (we hoped one day to be able to do daily sessions, like a real-world Parliament!). That was still not enough, and the need for having someone deal with things like land management on a daily basis was overwhelming, to the point that we had no choice but to create the Executive Branch. At that time, it was expected that we would have a detailed document expanding on the powers and duties of the Chancellor and the Executive established in the Constitution, and that such document, introduced as laws, would be updated continuously, as the need arises. However, a comprehensive list of such powers and duties was never done, and even recent attempts to do so remain abandoned and forgotten.
The CDS runs on a common law system. The philosophical discussion around that started well before we built a single prim on Anzere. Common law systems are easy to start and to add to and amend. The main problem they have is that each law has to be validated not only independently, but in the context of all previous laws, as well as by the precedents used in each case that the law was applied. This makes the task considerably more and more difficult over the years. Theoretically, every new law should carefully validate if it doesn't create new ambiguities, overlaps or contradicts previous laws, forgets to revoke existing laws, or fails to be applicable because of irreconcilable contradictions. In practice, at the beginning, it was expected that it was the role of the SC to validate recently passed laws to avoid the most glaring mistakes.
At some time, however, it was felt that the SC had way too much power. It could not only refuse to accept a badly written law, but also veto any law that did not make any sense or contradicted previous ones. The SC's powers were much restricted, and it is currently limited to veto laws that clearly contradict the Constitution (and the UDHR and the LL ToS...). Except for that, the RA can pretty much write whatever they wish. They're also not compelled to revisit old laws and see if they still apply or not. Instead, we have a bit of a reversal of philosophy: when a law seems contradictory, a request is made to the SC to see if that law is still valid or not. So now the SC has the ungrateful task of validating laws a posteriori, and only when requested to do so.
Around 2008/9, there was a slight change of philosophy. What mattered most was the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Since many were still familiar with the intent of each law, even if it was badly written or did not apply, the original intent was still known, and, at such, laws could still be applied, in spite of being full of contradictions and mistakes. We still had a good working idea of what the laws were for.
Time passes, and naturally we cannot rely on 'lore' any more. We have way more citizens right now, many of which were not present when those laws were passed. Checking for old transcripts is a nightmare (but Rose Springvale has fortunately been able to extract all transcripts of past RA meetings, so that they are now published on the Portal). But even if the transcripts help to understand the intent, often, due to inconsistencies, many laws cannot be applied easily, since the letter of the law refers to organisations that don't exist any more, or have contradictory applications due to conflicts with other laws which were never resolved.
Over time, thus, it became common practice to apply 'lore' — 'this is what we do in this situation because that's what we have always done' — than 'law', because 'law' might be incomplete, incorrect, not applicable, or simply non-existing to handle many cases which continuously pop up and require to be addressed. Because the SC lost the ability to pronounce decisions about 'lore', and the origins of certain traditions have been lost (or are incomprehensible for many newer citizens), the truth is that the gap between what the law says and what we're actually doing can widen more and more, to the point of becoming unmanageable. Cadence has launched a discussion about this very same topic back in June.
It is the duty of the RA to correct mistakes in the laws and eventually even revoke laws completely. Obviously these corrections cannot be made retroactively. They can only apply to future situations. The problem here is that the RA already has too much work to do. This term, for instance, well over a dozen laws have been proposed for discussion (and half a dozen proposed laws 'inherited' from the previous term). A few laws were privately discussed and not even put up for public discussion. So far, well into the last half of this term, the RA, although doing exemplary work with an unusual degree of productivity (even if I'm biased to say so!), we have only managed to approve a single law, although it's conceivable that each of the two current commissions might approve two further laws. That will mean that the next administration will inherit at least 20 laws to discuss and eventually approve. Many of those try to correct past mistakes, but many are also completely new.
To make matters worse... Rose Springvale, as you know, is currently in the process of updating the current Code of Laws. This should be the second major update occurring in our history. When that work is done, there will be extensive revision to see which laws need updates and corrections. I can imagine that at least 20 or even perhaps 30 laws will require updates, and most of those updates will be quite tricky, and require extensive discussion. You can imagine how long that will take!
Nevertheless, each time we have a 'crisis', it is a good opportunity to revisit some of the existing laws, and try to correct them. Specifically regarding NL 8-2, 8-4, and some related laws — for instance, regarding oversight and supervision by a non-existing supervising body named in the laws — I have endeavoured to submit a few ideas for private review. Soon, hopefully, they can be published for public review as well. Although the proposed changes will not have retroactive application, since some citizens (like Butterfli) have shown interest in using those laws to add further regions to the CDS, but very correctly pointed out some aspects in those laws that were not clear, I believe it's the duty of the RA to adequately revise and clarify existing laws so that all citizen's concerns and questions can be incorporated in them for future application.