Legal inflation and defective laws

Abstract Legal systems often suffer from what may be called legal inflation : an excess of laws that erodes legal compliance. The difficulty lies in identifyng which laws are responsible for this erosion. Democratic deliberation is poorly suited to the task. This paper advances an identification criterion: laws that generate both widespread non-compliance and inconsistent enforcement should be regarded as defective , because they fail to function as laws. I propose a new version of the rule of obsolescence to repeal defective laws. This framework clarifies the mechanisms by which legal inflation undermines institutional stability and offers guidance for legal reform.