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To an outsider like me, this situation seems bizarre; please correct me if this is wrong, but... It seems like you're arguing that it's reasonable to keep thes

by moefh 7y ago

To an outsider like me, this situation seems bizarre; please correct me if this is wrong, but... It seems like you're arguing that it's reasonable to keep these annotations private because it's already impossible to understand the law without other stuff that is private, not because these annotations are not essential to understanding the law.

rayiner 7y ago
You’re starting from a premise that doesn’t really work. In a common law system, you can’t completely “understand” the law. You guess at what the law requires, the judge evaluates the law in the context of what you did, and renders judgment based on everything from other judges’ opinions to statistical studies to the judge’s moral sensibilities. For example, we are currently debating in the US whether our workplace discrimination law covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Erudite analysis has been written espousing both sides of that issue. Can you say you “understand” that law? Yet, people are expected to follow it. The relevant distinction is between what sources are binding and what sources are not. The statutory text is binding. Case law in the same jurisdiction is binding. The annotations produced by a private company, or private scholarship published in a treatise, are not binding.
- moefh 7y ago
  Thank you for explaining, that makes a lot of sense. What's surprising is not that it's very hard to understand the law; it's big and messy and evolving. What's surprising is that in practice one has to pay money to even try to understand what the experts are talking about. It's impossible to find all the relevant texts to study in a library, for example. That seems deeply undesirable; it exacerbates the problem you described of people being expected to follow the law when they can't possibly understand it.

by moefh 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

You’re starting from a premise that doesn’t really work. In a common law system, you can’t completely “understand” the law. You guess at what the law requires, the judge evaluates the law in the context of what you did, and renders judgment based on everything from other judges’ opinions to statistical studies to the judge’s moral sensibilities. For example, we are currently debating in the US whether our workplace discrimination law covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Erudite analysis has been written espousing both sides of that issue. Can you say you “understand” that law? Yet, people are expected to follow it. The relevant distinction is between what sources are binding and what sources are not. The statutory text is binding. Case law in the same jurisdiction is binding. The annotations produced by a private company, or private scholarship published in a treatise, are not binding.

moefh 7y ago
Thank you for explaining, that makes a lot of sense. What's surprising is not that it's very hard to understand the law; it's big and messy and evolving. What's surprising is that in practice one has to pay money to even try to understand what the experts are talking about. It's impossible to find all the relevant texts to study in a library, for example. That seems deeply undesirable; it exacerbates the problem you described of people being expected to follow the law when they can't possibly understand it.