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You do realise that vagaries are written into the law all the time? What do you suppose cruel and usual punishments means? Or unreasonable searches and seizures
by Defletter 3y ago
You do realise that vagaries are written into the law all the time? What do you suppose cruel and usual punishments means? Or unreasonable searches and seizures? Or just compensation? Or a speedy trial? Or excessive bail? Etc. These are all subjective.
- revelio 3y agoAnd those are not surprisingly some of the most vicious and fought over parts of law, which are only tenable at all because of hundreds of years of case law which refine them. Most of the time lawmakers do try to be precise about what they mean which is why law is so voluminous and why you so often need lawyers to help understand it. Good law is precise. Bad law isn't, regardless of how convenient it may be for the lawmakers to be vague. The existence of bad law doesn't justify the further propagation of it.
- Defletter 3y agoCould you please provide some examples of "most lawmakers try to be precise" before claiming that? And secondly, I object that good law is precise. I mentioned in another comment that the copyright tradition for continental Europe forbids by default any new methods of culture (eg, the invention of the internet), that the law needs to be changed to specifically allow it. You think we should do that for everything because good law is precise? I think good law is legible, not necessarily precise. Something that the average person can interpret is far, far better than something thousands of pages long because you must enumerate everything otherwise it's vague.