Is retroactive law making alway a bad thing?

Answer 1

The argument FOR retroactive laws:

Not always, it may have a common benefit for that society. For example to remove Death Penalty from the law, then it can be retroactive and just give life term to persons already sentenced for death. Usually it can be used to correct old law mistakes, or to adapt the law to a modern society. But still, this is a very discussed subject, and moral, ethics, and the bases of the law are questioned here.

The argument AGAINST retroactive laws:

A cornerstone of any society is the predictable nature of law, which allows persons acting under the law to understand beforehand what costs, consequences, benefits or privileges their behavior may realize.

For example, where person purchases a property hoping to benefit from certain zoning decision by the city council, a retroactive law might remove the benefit, costing the property owner financially--and further discouraging others from trusting the stability of law moving forward. Additionally, in criminal cases, political ambition or personal malice may aim to pass retroactive laws based on the passions of the day rather than long-term planning. Such laws might amend punishments for crimes which predate the retroactive law, resulting again in an inability of the public to trust the stability of law. Generally, as seen with the passage of retroactive sex offender laws during the 1990's, the result is a large number of affected persons who simply stop trusting their government and either fail or refuse to comply with the laws--benefiting neither society nor the individual.

Often retroactive laws are seen as necessary when lawmakers fail to properly give full consideration to a problem and determine a long-term solution to some social need. Therefore, any system which might allow retroactive laws would absolve lawmakers from any responsibility to fully research, debate and form laws.

There is a considerable amount of history which creates the anti-retroactivity principle of the American constitution. In the United States constitution, so-called 'ex post facto' (or after the fact) laws are prohibited. However, this was applied only to criminal laws by the US Supreme Court in the case of Calder v. Bull (1798). In response, many states in the US later added both "ex post facto" and "anti-retroactivity" clauses to their state constitutions. One state, Texas, has both a prohibition against ex post facto (criminal) and retroactive (civil) legislation.