5 ms·

I once heard someone describe law as simply software for people. I love how you describe these maneuvers as hacks.

inopinatus 10y ago
That is a common misconception, especially amongst engineers. There's a large cohort of smart people who've read a contract and think this means they grasp the law; but without understanding jurisprudence or equity, common/case law, the myriad forms of legislation, actual legal proceedings &c &c. In reality the law is not a programming language, and trying to treat it as such is a common cause of disappointment, frustration, anger, needless bickering, extended conflict, and vexatiously long and mostly unenforceable contracts.
- leesalminen 10y ago
  I agree. I used to look at contracts as a series of logical statements with conditionals, inheritance, etc. After going through an extremely nasty contract dispute I learned that contracts have limited value and that I should never trust anyone, even if 4 lawyers reviewed the terms.
- burrows 10y ago
  > There's a large cohort of smart people who've read a contract and think this means they grasp the law; but without understanding jurisprudence or equity, common/case law, the myriad forms of legislation, actual legal proceedings &c &c. There's a large cohort of smart people who've read a program and think this means they grasp its semantics; but without understanding the language specification, compiler bugs, undefined behavior implementation, posix specification, operating system bugs and configuration of deployment environment.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    I don't see why you're getting downvoted here, because the analogy is pretty apt. Much like programming languages, law language has evolved to be written in a way that's unambiguous as possible. Like programming languages, contracts and the like don't succeed in having 100% predictable semantics. One source of unpredictability of results comes from the lack of a stable, 100% predictable execution platform (namely, judges, juries, lawyers, and current case law and legislation), much like compilers and platforms do not 100% specify their behavior, or even when they do, the run-time behavior is not perfectly predictable (e.g. when does the GC run). Another source of unpredictability is that law at the end of the day must interface with the non-legal world ('facts' vs. law) and so touches global context which isn't known when the law or contract was drafted, which one might compare to dealing with unforeseen interactions with the OS, deployment environments, user input, etc. So while laws and programs try to accurately and precisely encode their own internal semantics, they sometimes fail because they depend on other things that don't have perfectly defined semantics.
- ergothus 10y ago
  Agreed. One of the most startling discoveries I had about contracts was the concept of "consideration", i.e. that both parties of a contract should be getting something of roughly equal value. Without consideration, the contract becomes unenforceable. Prior to learning that, I viewed contracts as a set of rules, and if you didn't like the rules you agreed to, well, you lost at the contract game. Consideration turned out to be the first of a lot of contract concepts I didn't know of (and doubtless there are many concepts I still don't know about). My ex went to law school, and I found the attitude of "non-lawyers have no business having opinions about the law" that her law school promoted to be vile. That said, I've found that it's a good idea to assume that any legal issue is NOT straightforward. Doing otherwise usually ends up making me look ignorant, and has me spreading false conclusions to other non-lawyers around me.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > something of roughly equal value The value doesn't have to be equal, simply that both sides offer something of value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration#Monetary_value_of_consideration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration#Monetary_value_o...
    - ergothus 10y ago
      Many record contracts are overturned once the person gets famous. I was told this was usually due to consideration issues, though I don't know that is a fact.
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  They are more like standards documents for people. They are often thought to be unambiguous, but they frequently end up with multiple competing interpretations.
maxxxxx 10y ago
I would describe the law as "spaghetti code" with a lot of side effects and undefined behavior :-)
samfisher83 10y ago
I would describe it more like Sabre (Airline booking system). Where there are so many different rules you end up some crazy pricing rules cause there are just like a million different rules evolved over time, and no really knows why it happens.

That is a common misconception, especially amongst engineers. There's a large cohort of smart people who've read a contract and think this means they grasp the law; but without understanding jurisprudence or equity, common/case law, the myriad forms of legislation, actual legal proceedings &c &c. In reality the law is not a programming language, and trying to treat it as such is a common cause of disappointment, frustration, anger, needless bickering, extended conflict, and vexatiously long and mostly unenforceable contracts.

leesalminen 10y ago
I agree. I used to look at contracts as a series of logical statements with conditionals, inheritance, etc. After going through an extremely nasty contract dispute I learned that contracts have limited value and that I should never trust anyone, even if 4 lawyers reviewed the terms.
burrows 10y ago
> There's a large cohort of smart people who've read a contract and think this means they grasp the law; but without understanding jurisprudence or equity, common/case law, the myriad forms of legislation, actual legal proceedings &c &c. There's a large cohort of smart people who've read a program and think this means they grasp its semantics; but without understanding the language specification, compiler bugs, undefined behavior implementation, posix specification, operating system bugs and configuration of deployment environment.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  I don't see why you're getting downvoted here, because the analogy is pretty apt. Much like programming languages, law language has evolved to be written in a way that's unambiguous as possible. Like programming languages, contracts and the like don't succeed in having 100% predictable semantics. One source of unpredictability of results comes from the lack of a stable, 100% predictable execution platform (namely, judges, juries, lawyers, and current case law and legislation), much like compilers and platforms do not 100% specify their behavior, or even when they do, the run-time behavior is not perfectly predictable (e.g. when does the GC run). Another source of unpredictability is that law at the end of the day must interface with the non-legal world ('facts' vs. law) and so touches global context which isn't known when the law or contract was drafted, which one might compare to dealing with unforeseen interactions with the OS, deployment environments, user input, etc. So while laws and programs try to accurately and precisely encode their own internal semantics, they sometimes fail because they depend on other things that don't have perfectly defined semantics.
ergothus 10y ago
Agreed. One of the most startling discoveries I had about contracts was the concept of "consideration", i.e. that both parties of a contract should be getting something of roughly equal value. Without consideration, the contract becomes unenforceable. Prior to learning that, I viewed contracts as a set of rules, and if you didn't like the rules you agreed to, well, you lost at the contract game. Consideration turned out to be the first of a lot of contract concepts I didn't know of (and doubtless there are many concepts I still don't know about). My ex went to law school, and I found the attitude of "non-lawyers have no business having opinions about the law" that her law school promoted to be vile. That said, I've found that it's a good idea to assume that any legal issue is NOT straightforward. Doing otherwise usually ends up making me look ignorant, and has me spreading false conclusions to other non-lawyers around me.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > something of roughly equal value The value doesn't have to be equal, simply that both sides offer something of value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration#Monetary_value_of_consideration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration#Monetary_value_o...
  - ergothus 10y ago
    Many record contracts are overturned once the person gets famous. I was told this was usually due to consideration issues, though I don't know that is a fact.
TheCoelacanth 10y ago
They are more like standards documents for people. They are often thought to be unambiguous, but they frequently end up with multiple competing interpretations.

maxxxxx 10y ago

I would describe the law as "spaghetti code" with a lot of side effects and undefined behavior :-)

samfisher83 10y ago

I would describe it more like Sabre (Airline booking system). Where there are so many different rules you end up some crazy pricing rules cause there are just like a million different rules evolved over time, and no really knows why it happens.