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>Considering you ask for a book for a "lay person" on "rigorous law", I don't think that was presumptuous at all. cormacrelf's point is that there is no such th

>Considering you ask for a book for a "lay person" on "rigorous law", I don't think that was presumptuous at all. cormacrelf's point is that there is no such thing i laid out exactly what i thought was presumptuous 1. that i'm cavalier 2. that i'm not comfortable with detail oriented analysis. >"lay person" on "rigorous law" there is no mention of rigor in cormacrelf's post. rigor and detail are not synonymous. >If it's written for a layperson, it can't be rigorous is this a feature of "the law"? i can point to many rigorous math books that do not require a specialists understanding of the math (read: they introduce all the necessary ideas).

cormacrelf 7y ago
I was trying to get across why such books don’t exist, and why it might take more effort than you might think. The reason those math books exist is that people who understand the Riemann Hypothesis halfway are not a huge danger to themselves and others. If you wrote a law book designed for lay folk, it would fly off the shelves into the hands of people who become self-represented litigants who would then screw up their lives and give bad advice to their friends. Half-baked legal ideas about what you are or are not allowed to do also get relied upon in practice, with disastrous results. Whatever “navigate the legal system” means to you, that’s what it means to everyone else. Of course, there are thousands of mostly government publications out there that do a great job explaining what your rights are in different situations. I don’t have a problem with these, because they don’t give anyone the power to read a case and think they know what it means for them. When it comes to “introduc[ing] all the necessary ideas”, I was also making the point with torts books that the ideas are not able to be easily isolated from just learning the law. I would also argue that there is no such thing as “rigorous law” in the sense that it implies some law that is not rigorous that could still be usefully practiced. Hand-wavy explanations in math are pedagogical; hand-wavy arguments in law are either unsupported or appeals to bigger or competing principles, of which the latter is absolutely still “rigorous law” and has to acknowledge the omitted details anyway. If you don’t have the depth of knowledge, you end up in the former category pretty quickly. If you wanted an academic perspective with normative arguments about what the law should be, then sure, but that’s not “navigating the legal system”. (Also, I can’t recommend a torts book. Wrong jurisdiction probably.)
- mlevental 7y ago
  >If you wrote a law book designed for lay folk, it would fly off the shelves into the hands of people who become self-represented litigants who would then screw up their lives and give bad advice to their friends. the same could be said about very many things - from biology to auto repair. it's a very strange position to take on education because the converse is also possible - the more educated someone becomes the more humble they become about how nuanced/subtle the topic really is.
  - cormacrelf 7y ago
    I bet car manufacturers wish people would stick to the guidance they distribute for the engines they make. But it’ll never happen. There will never be a professional organisation to weed out bad or fraudulent mechanics, so people are always going to need the basic knowledge to work out when they’re being conned. Medicine, law ... professions that self-regulate are justified in caring that people don’t try to DIY, because they present a credible and reliable way. You might be tempted to argue protectionism, but that only really flies when some specific job is so completely studied and process-driven that you don’t need the professionals any more. Not exactly the case when you’re talking about interpreting appellate cases or similar, judging by the context of Kerr’s article. I don’t know what you mean about humility. (Oh - re those new readers. Yes, it’s possible someone will read Law For Dummies and back out recognising the vastness of their incomprehension. But those people were likely to hire a lawyer for real problems already. We’re worried about the people who want to confirm that they’ll be fine without seeking advice. Unless you just lace it with recommendations to seek a lawyer, in which case congratulations, you are a local renting tribunal’s public information officer.)

cormacrelf 7y ago

I was trying to get across why such books don’t exist, and why it might take more effort than you might think. The reason those math books exist is that people who understand the Riemann Hypothesis halfway are not a huge danger to themselves and others. If you wrote a law book designed for lay folk, it would fly off the shelves into the hands of people who become self-represented litigants who would then screw up their lives and give bad advice to their friends. Half-baked legal ideas about what you are or are not allowed to do also get relied upon in practice, with disastrous results. Whatever “navigate the legal system” means to you, that’s what it means to everyone else. Of course, there are thousands of mostly government publications out there that do a great job explaining what your rights are in different situations. I don’t have a problem with these, because they don’t give anyone the power to read a case and think they know what it means for them. When it comes to “introduc[ing] all the necessary ideas”, I was also making the point with torts books that the ideas are not able to be easily isolated from just learning the law. I would also argue that there is no such thing as “rigorous law” in the sense that it implies some law that is not rigorous that could still be usefully practiced. Hand-wavy explanations in math are pedagogical; hand-wavy arguments in law are either unsupported or appeals to bigger or competing principles, of which the latter is absolutely still “rigorous law” and has to acknowledge the omitted details anyway. If you don’t have the depth of knowledge, you end up in the former category pretty quickly. If you wanted an academic perspective with normative arguments about what the law should be, then sure, but that’s not “navigating the legal system”. (Also, I can’t recommend a torts book. Wrong jurisdiction probably.)

mlevental 7y ago
>If you wrote a law book designed for lay folk, it would fly off the shelves into the hands of people who become self-represented litigants who would then screw up their lives and give bad advice to their friends. the same could be said about very many things - from biology to auto repair. it's a very strange position to take on education because the converse is also possible - the more educated someone becomes the more humble they become about how nuanced/subtle the topic really is.
- cormacrelf 7y ago
  I bet car manufacturers wish people would stick to the guidance they distribute for the engines they make. But it’ll never happen. There will never be a professional organisation to weed out bad or fraudulent mechanics, so people are always going to need the basic knowledge to work out when they’re being conned. Medicine, law ... professions that self-regulate are justified in caring that people don’t try to DIY, because they present a credible and reliable way. You might be tempted to argue protectionism, but that only really flies when some specific job is so completely studied and process-driven that you don’t need the professionals any more. Not exactly the case when you’re talking about interpreting appellate cases or similar, judging by the context of Kerr’s article. I don’t know what you mean about humility. (Oh - re those new readers. Yes, it’s possible someone will read Law For Dummies and back out recognising the vastness of their incomprehension. But those people were likely to hire a lawyer for real problems already. We’re worried about the people who want to confirm that they’ll be fine without seeking advice. Unless you just lace it with recommendations to seek a lawyer, in which case congratulations, you are a local renting tribunal’s public information officer.)