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> Almost all laws and legal orders have some ambiguity to them. That doesn't make this a desired trait that should be willfully accepted. Force them to make th

> Almost all laws and legal orders have some ambiguity to them. That doesn't make this a desired trait that should be willfully accepted. Force them to make them not ambiguous, otherwise they will remain as such. Ambiguous laws and punishments are one of the largest sources of judicial inequality in every nation. Authority does not need to be respected if it does not respect those who authorized it.

ardy42 6y ago
> That doesn't make this a desired trait that should be willfully accepted. Force them to make them not ambiguous, otherwise they will remain as such. Ambiguous laws and punishments are one of the largest sources of judicial inequality in every nation. It's not that simple. Fuzziness can be necessary to prevent bad actors from subverting the law through loopholes and to make the law applicable to future situations where it would reasonably be expected to apply. Fuzziness is also helpful to keep the law from being over-prescriptive. For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings. Similarly, you might write a law to mandate the availability of reasonable protections against infection, but you don't want the law to unambiguously require specific practices like hand-washing (because effective alternatives like hand-sanitizer didn't exist when the law was written). Most people here are software engineers or have familiarity with software engineering, analogous situations occur around writing requirements.
- DeathArrow 6y ago
  >For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings. Maybe in the anglo-saxon law system, this is true. In countries with napoleonic or roman law system judge's role is generally considered to be to apply the law as it is written, with the assumption that the law in most cases is sufficiently clear in itself.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > In countries with napoleonic or roman law system judge's role is generally considered to be to apply the law as it is written, with the assumption that the law in most cases is sufficiently clear in itself. I was under the impression that those Napoleonic/Roman law judges still have to interpret the law's meaning and apply it in ambiguous situations, but the difference is that their interpretations aren't binding on other judges like in the Anglo-Saxon system.
  - zwaps 6y ago
    The difference is more when it comes to precedence, which allows judges in Anglo-Saxon countries essentially to create law. Judges in France still need to interpret laws according to what they intended to do. There's then a majority and minority opinion(s) on how that law is intepreted, and these things are set by discourse and precedence, with judges being free to decide. In practice the difference is not so large.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Fuzziness can be necessary to prevent bad actors from subverting the law through loopholes and to make the law applicable to future situations where it would reasonably be expected to apply. This is just a flowery way of granting unchecked power to prosecutors under the theory that they'll use it in good faith. If the law is ambiguous and the prosecutor is allowed to choose an adverse interpretation in order to ensnare "bad actors" then they can really use it to ensnare anyone for anything, because everyone is technically in violation under the strict interpretation so all they have to do is decide who they don't like and charge them with the violation that everyone is technically committing. It's a complete abandonment of the rule of law. The answer to "loopholes" is to close them, or better yet take more time to evaluate what you're doing from the start so you don't create them in the first place. Notice in particular that nearly all "loopholes" come from some combination of internal inconsistencies, unnecessary complexity or an inherent unreasonableness of the rules to begin with. (If you find yourself spending all day carving out exceptions to a rule, chances are it's a bad rule.) > Fuzziness is also helpful to keep the law from being over-prescriptive. This is not actually helpful because vagueness prohibits more alternatives than specificity. Overly specific rules are to be avoided, but at least then you know how to comply with them. If the rule just says "don't be bad" then you have to sit motionless and do nothing because there is no way to know what "bad" means until judgement is being passed and it's already too late not to do it. > For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings. This isn't an argument for intentional ambiguity. "Writings" was ambiguous because more than writings didn't exist when it was drafted. So it wasn't ambiguous in practice for about a hundred years. Then movies and sound recordings came to exist, there was a court case about whether they could be covered, the answer was yes, and once again the answer was unambiguous for about a hundred years since. There was only a short period between when the world changed and when the law was clarified that the answer wasn't clear. This is how you want it -- it shouldn't start off as ambiguous when it's passed and if something changes that causes it to be unclear then an interpretation should be chosen promptly so that it goes back to being unambiguous. The ambiguity is a thing to be minimized to the fullest extent practicable. Notice also that the Copyright Act doesn't say "creative work" but rather "work fixed in a tangible medium of expression," which is much more suitable language than "creative work," because it doesn't exclude movies or VR works just because they didn't exist when the words were drafted, but at the same time it then doesn't cover abstract ideas or unrecorded expressions or inventions that should be covered by patent rather than copyright. > Similarly, you might write a law to mandate the availability of reasonable protections against infection, but you don't want the law to unambiguously require specific practices like hand-washing (because effective alternatives like hand-sanitizer didn't exist when the law was written). Except that then no one has any idea at all what "reasonable protections against infection" means. Does it mean washing your hands, or full hazmat gear? Does everyone have to wear the hazmat gear or only doctors? Do you have to wash your hands after every new patient or is it against the law to only do it three times a day? Does it matter if the patient evaluation indicates they're not infected? That rule tells you nothing. It gives cover to negligent providers with good lawyers and gives cover to malicious prosecutors who then have a pretext to prosecute anybody they don't like. > Most people here are software engineers or have familiarity with software engineering, analogous situations occur around writing requirements This should make them more familiar with why you're wrong, because in technical writing you have similar constraints and manage to deal with them even when there is no judge to provide an ex post facto interpretation. It is necessary to be clear about what you're saying from the start.
ska 6y ago
It's not a desired state, it's a natural state. By this I mean we don't know how to make such a system practical without ambiguity. Not that people haven't tried.

ardy42 6y ago

> That doesn't make this a desired trait that should be willfully accepted. Force them to make them not ambiguous, otherwise they will remain as such. Ambiguous laws and punishments are one of the largest sources of judicial inequality in every nation. It's not that simple. Fuzziness can be necessary to prevent bad actors from subverting the law through loopholes and to make the law applicable to future situations where it would reasonably be expected to apply. Fuzziness is also helpful to keep the law from being over-prescriptive. For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings. Similarly, you might write a law to mandate the availability of reasonable protections against infection, but you don't want the law to unambiguously require specific practices like hand-washing (because effective alternatives like hand-sanitizer didn't exist when the law was written). Most people here are software engineers or have familiarity with software engineering, analogous situations occur around writing requirements.

DeathArrow 6y ago
>For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings. Maybe in the anglo-saxon law system, this is true. In countries with napoleonic or roman law system judge's role is generally considered to be to apply the law as it is written, with the assumption that the law in most cases is sufficiently clear in itself.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > In countries with napoleonic or roman law system judge's role is generally considered to be to apply the law as it is written, with the assumption that the law in most cases is sufficiently clear in itself. I was under the impression that those Napoleonic/Roman law judges still have to interpret the law's meaning and apply it in ambiguous situations, but the difference is that their interpretations aren't binding on other judges like in the Anglo-Saxon system.
- zwaps 6y ago
  The difference is more when it comes to precedence, which allows judges in Anglo-Saxon countries essentially to create law. Judges in France still need to interpret laws according to what they intended to do. There's then a majority and minority opinion(s) on how that law is intepreted, and these things are set by discourse and precedence, with judges being free to decide. In practice the difference is not so large.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Fuzziness can be necessary to prevent bad actors from subverting the law through loopholes and to make the law applicable to future situations where it would reasonably be expected to apply. This is just a flowery way of granting unchecked power to prosecutors under the theory that they'll use it in good faith. If the law is ambiguous and the prosecutor is allowed to choose an adverse interpretation in order to ensnare "bad actors" then they can really use it to ensnare anyone for anything, because everyone is technically in violation under the strict interpretation so all they have to do is decide who they don't like and charge them with the violation that everyone is technically committing. It's a complete abandonment of the rule of law. The answer to "loopholes" is to close them, or better yet take more time to evaluate what you're doing from the start so you don't create them in the first place. Notice in particular that nearly all "loopholes" come from some combination of internal inconsistencies, unnecessary complexity or an inherent unreasonableness of the rules to begin with. (If you find yourself spending all day carving out exceptions to a rule, chances are it's a bad rule.) > Fuzziness is also helpful to keep the law from being over-prescriptive. This is not actually helpful because vagueness prohibits more alternatives than specificity. Overly specific rules are to be avoided, but at least then you know how to comply with them. If the rule just says "don't be bad" then you have to sit motionless and do nothing because there is no way to know what "bad" means until judgement is being passed and it's already too late not to do it. > For instance, if you have a copyright law you might write it to apply to any "creative work" but leave that relatively undefined and left up to interpretation by a reasonable person (i.e. a judge). You don't want movies left unprotected, because the law was unambiguously written to only apply to writings. This isn't an argument for intentional ambiguity. "Writings" was ambiguous because more than writings didn't exist when it was drafted. So it wasn't ambiguous in practice for about a hundred years. Then movies and sound recordings came to exist, there was a court case about whether they could be covered, the answer was yes, and once again the answer was unambiguous for about a hundred years since. There was only a short period between when the world changed and when the law was clarified that the answer wasn't clear. This is how you want it -- it shouldn't start off as ambiguous when it's passed and if something changes that causes it to be unclear then an interpretation should be chosen promptly so that it goes back to being unambiguous. The ambiguity is a thing to be minimized to the fullest extent practicable. Notice also that the Copyright Act doesn't say "creative work" but rather "work fixed in a tangible medium of expression," which is much more suitable language than "creative work," because it doesn't exclude movies or VR works just because they didn't exist when the words were drafted, but at the same time it then doesn't cover abstract ideas or unrecorded expressions or inventions that should be covered by patent rather than copyright. > Similarly, you might write a law to mandate the availability of reasonable protections against infection, but you don't want the law to unambiguously require specific practices like hand-washing (because effective alternatives like hand-sanitizer didn't exist when the law was written). Except that then no one has any idea at all what "reasonable protections against infection" means. Does it mean washing your hands, or full hazmat gear? Does everyone have to wear the hazmat gear or only doctors? Do you have to wash your hands after every new patient or is it against the law to only do it three times a day? Does it matter if the patient evaluation indicates they're not infected? That rule tells you nothing. It gives cover to negligent providers with good lawyers and gives cover to malicious prosecutors who then have a pretext to prosecute anybody they don't like. > Most people here are software engineers or have familiarity with software engineering, analogous situations occur around writing requirements This should make them more familiar with why you're wrong, because in technical writing you have similar constraints and manage to deal with them even when there is no judge to provide an ex post facto interpretation. It is necessary to be clear about what you're saying from the start.

ska 6y ago

It's not a desired state, it's a natural state. By this I mean we don't know how to make such a system practical without ambiguity. Not that people haven't tried.