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I've sat in on a few court cases, and also in a jury for a murder trial. It is honestly very scary to me how a judge, a single person, can decide something that

I've sat in on a few court cases, and also in a jury for a murder trial. It is honestly very scary to me how a judge, a single person, can decide something that affects so many people. To me this seems like a flaw in the US's democratic consensus algorithm. It is literally no different than if Bitcoin's algorithm allowed a single node to decide what to do with 100k BTC flowing across the network. That much decision-making power should never reside with a single person, no matter how many people voted that person to that position. When you think about it, it's pretty scary how even something like a democracy works in practice. It's not a great system but I guess it's better than all the rest?

acjacobson 7y ago
Well, the theory says that the judge can only apply the current law as is written. And as written his interpretation is that the FDA has regulatory jurisdiction (and therefore obligation) over E-Cigarettes. But the judge doesn't create the law. If Congress wants to change the law they can. There is nothing legally that prevents Congress from passing a law that specifically exempts E-Cigarettes from FDA approval. I am not saying that politically this is feasible - the point is only that one judge is not the only party capable of making a decision.
- deaddrop 7y ago
  I think that their critique of the overall judicial system was a tangential aside and didn't - directly - apply to this specific situation. Admittedly, I could be wrong here but that was my take-away from the OC.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  You can "fix" a memory-blowup bug by just auto-restarting the server when the memory usage hits a threshold. It temporarily alleviates the problem, but it doesn't actually fix the bug. The bug is still there, and will happen again and the server will have to be restarted again, ad infinitum. The only way to solve the issue is to find out what code is not releasing memory properly. One judge can interpret law-v1 on a whim, thereby affecting millions of people, and the only way to "fix" the bug is to get Congress to update the law to v2, which potentially takes years, which is going to leave an entire generation screwed for that time. That still doesn't solve the problem because some judge will eventually interpret law-v2 in a shifty way and this will lead to law-v3, ad infinitum. It's a bug, not a feature. Laws are closer to guidelines. The real power seems to reside with judges who get to decide the realized consequences of violating a law, and in many cases, the nuances of what causes a law to be violated. At the end of the day, a person's life can sometimes be affected because of a decision made by a single judge.

acjacobson 7y ago

Well, the theory says that the judge can only apply the current law as is written. And as written his interpretation is that the FDA has regulatory jurisdiction (and therefore obligation) over E-Cigarettes. But the judge doesn't create the law. If Congress wants to change the law they can. There is nothing legally that prevents Congress from passing a law that specifically exempts E-Cigarettes from FDA approval. I am not saying that politically this is feasible - the point is only that one judge is not the only party capable of making a decision.

deaddrop 7y ago
I think that their critique of the overall judicial system was a tangential aside and didn't - directly - apply to this specific situation. Admittedly, I could be wrong here but that was my take-away from the OC.
anonytrary 7y ago
You can "fix" a memory-blowup bug by just auto-restarting the server when the memory usage hits a threshold. It temporarily alleviates the problem, but it doesn't actually fix the bug. The bug is still there, and will happen again and the server will have to be restarted again, ad infinitum. The only way to solve the issue is to find out what code is not releasing memory properly. One judge can interpret law-v1 on a whim, thereby affecting millions of people, and the only way to "fix" the bug is to get Congress to update the law to v2, which potentially takes years, which is going to leave an entire generation screwed for that time. That still doesn't solve the problem because some judge will eventually interpret law-v2 in a shifty way and this will lead to law-v3, ad infinitum. It's a bug, not a feature. Laws are closer to guidelines. The real power seems to reside with judges who get to decide the realized consequences of violating a law, and in many cases, the nuances of what causes a law to be violated. At the end of the day, a person's life can sometimes be affected because of a decision made by a single judge.