Radical Migrations Of The Overton Window

Overton Window: The range of ideas the public will tolerate shifts over time, and policies once seen as unthinkable can move through radical, acceptable and sensible to popular and finally to law in a few decades.

Joseph Overton: The policy analyst at the Mackinac Center in Michigan developed the idea in the 1990s, and the name was attached to it after his death in an ultralight aircraft accident in 2003.

Gallup Same Sex Marriage Poll: Support for legal same sex marriage in the United States rose from about 27 percent in 1996 to around 70 percent by 2021, one of the fastest opinion shifts ever measured.

Defense Of Marriage Act: Passed with overwhelming support in 1996 and signed by President Clinton, it defined marriage as between a man and a woman and was struck down in key parts by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Netherlands Marriage Law Of 2001: The Dutch became the first country to legalize same sex marriage, a step that had looked wildly radical a generation earlier.

Lawrence V Texas: The 2003 ruling struck down state laws against same sex intimacy, reversing a decision on the same issue from just seventeen years earlier.

Loving V Virginia: The 1967 case struck down bans on interracial marriage, and Gallup found that approval of such marriages rose from about 4 percent in 1958 to over 90 percent by the 2020s.

Slavery Abolition Act 1833: Britain ended slavery across most of its empire, but the government borrowed about 20 million pounds to compensate slave owners, with nothing paid to the people who had been enslaved.

Brookes Slave Ship Diagram: A 1788 print showing 454 people packed into a slave ship became one of the first viral images of a social movement and helped move abolition from fringe to mainstream.

Irish Smoking Ban Of 2004: Ireland became the first country to ban smoking in all workplaces, including pubs, a move critics predicted would be unenforceable and which became widely accepted within months.

Helena Heart Attack Study: A small 2002 study in Montana reported a drop in heart attack admissions after a public smoking ban took effect, an early finding that boosted the case for such laws, though later work refined the size of the effect.

Te Awa Tupua Act: In 2017 New Zealand granted the Whanganui River legal personhood, recognizing it as an indivisible living whole with its own rights, guided by Maori understanding of the river.

Ecuador Rights Of Nature: In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to write rights of nature into its constitution, allowing people to sue on behalf of ecosystems.

Atrato River: In 2016 Colombia's Constitutional Court declared the Atrato River a legal subject with rights to protection, conservation and restoration.

Finland Basic Income Experiment: Between 2017 and 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns received a monthly payment with no conditions, putting universal basic income into government testing.

Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend: Since 1982, Alaska has paid an annual check to nearly every resident from oil revenue, a long running example of something close to a basic income.

Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration: Starting in 2019, 125 residents of Stockton, California received 500 dollars a month for two years in a pilot that helped spark a wave of guaranteed income trials.

Kate Sheppard Petition: The 1893 suffrage petition in New Zealand gathered about 32,000 signatures, and the country became the first self governing nation to give women the vote.

Wyoming Territory 1869: Wyoming gave women the vote decades before the rest of the United States, an early flash of what later became constitutional law.

Harry Burn: In 1920, the youngest legislator in Tennessee cast the deciding vote to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment after getting a letter from his mother urging him to support suffrage.

Proposition 215: California's 1996 ballot measure allowed medical cannabis, a stunning change from the policies of the time and the first major step of a long march toward legalization.

Amendment 64: In 2012, voters in Colorado approved legal recreational cannabis, and Washington State did the same, opening a path that dozens of states have followed.

Denver Psilocybin Decriminalization: In 2019, Denver voters narrowly approved making enforcement of laws against psilocybin mushrooms among the lowest priorities for police, the first such vote in the nation.

Oregon Measure 109: In 2020, Oregon voters approved a system of supervised psilocybin services, making it the first state to create a regulated pathway for the substance.

Anne Gorsuch Burford: Ronald Reagan's first EPA administrator cut the agency's staff and budget, then resigned in 1983 after being cited for contempt of Congress, an example of the window swinging back.