3 ms·

It surely escapes me. What does it mean?

• alanfranz 3y ago
  That you cannot hack law as you would with smart contracts, because law is enforced by humans, not computers.
• Xylakant 3y ago
  The law is interpreted, not executed. It has intention that will be applied by judges and juries. Sometimes you can find loopholes in a law if a judge/jury is willing to follow a specific, often narrow interpretation of the law, but that's harder than it seems at first glance.
• pcthrowaway 3y ago
  I haven't heard this phrase (rather, I've heard "code is law" in reference to a subset of smart contract exploits that could also be considered "creative arbitrage opportunities" if you squint enough) But in this case, the person you're responding to is pointing out that law has the ability to be interpreted and even "created" ad-hoc through that interpretation, unlike code which needs to be updated to be changed.
• mindcrime 3y ago
  It means that "the law" isn't rigorously defined enough to execute on a computer. There's a reason we have judges, juries, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and all the other accoutrements of the judicial system. And that reason is that there is a need for human judgment and discretion when it comes to interpreting and executing the law. So no, you're probably not going to "get away with murder" due to an obscure and questionable loophole like the so-called "zone of death". Judges are going to apply their judgment, decide that no one involved in crafting the law intended such an outcome, and that the equitable thing to do is "some compromise that fit the situation as best as possible".
• avallach 3y ago
  Traditional way of expressing it is "following the spirit of the law vs the letter of the law". But in case of U.S. Constitution opinions are always divided, which of these interpretation is the right one.