You Can't Do That!

As I was looking through the Indiana Code, I found something unexpected.  It appears that it was added to the Indiana Code by the General Assembly in the late 1980s.  The code section is IC 1-1-5-2, which reads,

Sec. 2. Each general law of the state is enacted subject to the right of the general assembly to amend or repeal that law at any time, unless the general assembly waives this right in that law. Except as provided in:
    (1) IC 5-1-14-9; or
    (2) any other law containing a covenant that the general assembly will not amend or repeal that law;
the general assembly may not be construed to have waived its right to amend or repeal any general law at any time.

The first part of it is certainly true -- no legislature can pass a law that deprives subsequent legislatures of the power to repeal or amend it.  The latter legislature is the equal of the former.  This is ... pretty fundamental.  (If, instead of simply legislating, the legislature actually manages to make a contract, then it is of course forbidden to make any law impairing its obligation, but it can always pass a law to repeal a law.  I looked at IC 5-1-14-9, and it looks as though the General Assembly may have conceived of that as involving itself in a contract, but that was as far as I went in looking into that part of this.)  In this, the General Assembly was correct.

But then, the General Assembly expressed the opinion that it had the ability to waive the right of any future General Assembly to amend or repeal a particular law, and then it indicated that it could do so by passing a "law containing a covenant that the general assembly will not amend or repeal that law".  In that, the General Assembly was wrong.

I post this as a warning to any legislators who might stumble upon IC 1-1-5-2 and get the idea to write a bill "containing a covenant that the general assembly will not amend or repeal that law": Don't even bother.  You'll just be wasting everybody's time.