>Inflexibility. I think the iron answer from a judge is less flexible than the possibility to start a democratic petition against a scandalous oversight in the

>Inflexibility. I think the iron answer from a judge is less flexible than the possibility to start a democratic petition against a scandalous oversight in the formalized law... I was trying not to bring up mitigating circumstances, since many people don't see a good reason for their existence (I do!), but mitigating circumstances is actually one of the reasons I want formalization! The way society treats the law is highly oversimplified with one-liners like "the law is the law" and "innocent until proven guilty" and "every convicted person is guaranteed a just trial because the prosecution needs to prove their case" But if mitigating circumstances should be brought into consideration, then in theory you can't convict a person with a certain level of punishment until you have also proven that there were no mitigating circumstances, and I am not aware of any binding rule to try and locate or identify the mitigating circumstances. I.e. allow me to call a perpetrator "less guilty" if there are mitigating circumstances; if the prosecution wins a case in the current world without mitigating circumstances ever being brought up by the defense (because they might not be aware), we currently accept the "proof" by the prosecution, even though the punishment may be unjustly harder. I.e. the idea that the burden of proof in the current system lies totally with the prosecution is false, because the prosecution is not trying to diminish the sentence of the defense. By formalizing we would start a discussion on how exactly to formalize mitigating circumstances. I might choose to commit a crime against the (much older) perpetrators of my youth trauma, and while in practice I might get mitigating circumstances, I currently have no such guarantee...