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This is why the US uses the common law system. Laws are written and the courts then interpret them. The courts should be telling these yahoos that these actions

This is why the US uses the common law system. Laws are written and the courts then interpret them. The courts should be telling these yahoos that these actions are against the intent of the law.

AlbertCory 3y ago
> courts then interpret them. correct. They interpret what the law says, not what it "intends." If the legislators really wanted it to say something else, they should have written it that way.
- deelowe 3y ago
  I think that's splitting hairs a bit. Laws are written fairly broadly all the time and it's left up to the courts to determine the specifics.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Patent claims are also written broadly, deliberately by the lawyers. There's a whole part of every trial where "claim construction" takes place, and I personally helped with many of those briefs when in Google Legal. The briefs never argue "what the inventor intended." They argue about what the claims and the spec says and what those words mean. That can, indeed, leave room for argument, and that's why both sides write briefs. "Courts interpreting laws" are the same way -- what legislators thought they were voting for is irrelevant, let alone what they would think today. That's what "rule of law" means: a citizen can determine what's legal and what isn't.
    - deelowe 3y ago
      Not trying to be rude here, but I highly recommend you do a little more research on the common law system and how it works. At it's core, common law states that laws are interpreted over time and these interpretations become the official law of the land. There is no requirement that every conceivable form of infraction be enumerated within the law itself. Patents are something else entirely and not relevant to this discussion.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        When people say "not trying to be rude" they are, but prefer to not own it. Maybe you need to do some research. Patents are construed in exactly the same way as any other law.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        I don't know what your legal credentials are (are you a lawyer?). I had an article cited in an amicus brief to SCOTUS for the CLS Bank case, plus a shorter one in Law360. What have you published? Aside from that, I helped with numerous claim construction briefs. I highly recommend you educate yourself about the distinction between common law and statutory law, since you seem confused: > A clarification of the term "common law" is in order at this point. While common law may have originally referred to a body of law thought to exist in common across jurisdictions under generally accepted standards of legal reasoning, I use the term here to distinguish statutory law made by legislators from case law made by courts. It is well understood that each state has its own common law, crafted by its courts under the supervision of the state supreme court, subject only to the supremacy of federal statutory and constitutional law. https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2868&context=faculty_scholarship https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2... https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2432&context=vlr https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a... Corporations' relationship to their contractors is most definitely not "common law." At most, it's administrative law, and if we come to questions of interpretation, it's statutory law.
        deelowe 3y ago
        I'm not talking about contracts. I'm talking about labor laws and there have been prior instances where interpretations of labor law, the intent of the law, and how contractors were treated trumped what was written in the contracts (e.g. permatemps).
        AlbertCory 3y ago
        I don't even know what you're talking about anymore. Contracts? What does that have to do with it and when did those come up? Before, you were "not trying to be rude" about "common law," and I just demonstrated that common law has nothing to do with labor laws. Common law is judge-written law developed over centuries, as those references I gave you lay out. Labor laws are statutory law, sometimes modified by administrative rulings. As I said at the start of this, laws are construed by judges, much like patent claims are. Whether Amazon's indirect contractors are "employees" or not comes down to judges' constructions of the relevant laws, which in turn is influenced by the briefs submitted by each side. That's why California has had voter initiatives to change the laws. So what is the dispute, again?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > They interpret what the law says, not what it "intends." Within the bounds of the viable interpretations of the words actually written into the law, courts are, in fact, often guided by their reading of legislative intent in choosing which of the superficially viable interpretations is correct. The idea that interpreting what the laws say precludes interpreting what legislators mean seems to implicitly invoke the idea that any given set of words has only one tenable interpetation to start with, so you never need to look to external context to resolve meaning. This is a not-too-unpopular conceit, but its quite wrong.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    "quite wrong" -- no, you're wrong. "legislative intent" is in fact deeply controversial among judges. What counts as "intent"? Something a bill sponsor said, but other sponsors disagreed with? the only certain thing is what the bill says, and the fact that it passed.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      They claimed a specific thing is quite wrong. "the idea that any given set of words has only one tenable interpetation to start with" Do you really disagree with that claim? If legal words only had one tenable intepretation we could resolve contract disputes so quickly...
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        > Do you really disagree with that claim? why don't you say what language is being misinterpreted, and we'll go from there?
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Okay, let's start with "the entire body of law". If even a small fraction of laws have multiple tenable interpretations then that comment is correct. If you don't think that's the case for some laws, then I'm shocked. And this is before introducing the concept of "legislative intent", this is just at the base level of looking at the text of laws.
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  Legislative intent is a factor in statutory interpretation. You start with the text of the law and read it using the statutory interpretation statue. If it's still unclear then you look at legislative intent and previous interpretations to fill in the blanks.

This is why the US uses the common law system. Laws are written and the courts then interpret them. The courts should be telling these yahoos that these actions are against the intent of the law.

AlbertCory 3y ago

> courts then interpret them. correct. They interpret what the law says, not what it "intends." If the legislators really wanted it to say something else, they should have written it that way.

deelowe 3y ago
I think that's splitting hairs a bit. Laws are written fairly broadly all the time and it's left up to the courts to determine the specifics.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Patent claims are also written broadly, deliberately by the lawyers. There's a whole part of every trial where "claim construction" takes place, and I personally helped with many of those briefs when in Google Legal. The briefs never argue "what the inventor intended." They argue about what the claims and the spec says and what those words mean. That can, indeed, leave room for argument, and that's why both sides write briefs. "Courts interpreting laws" are the same way -- what legislators thought they were voting for is irrelevant, let alone what they would think today. That's what "rule of law" means: a citizen can determine what's legal and what isn't.
  - deelowe 3y ago
    Not trying to be rude here, but I highly recommend you do a little more research on the common law system and how it works. At it's core, common law states that laws are interpreted over time and these interpretations become the official law of the land. There is no requirement that every conceivable form of infraction be enumerated within the law itself. Patents are something else entirely and not relevant to this discussion.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      When people say "not trying to be rude" they are, but prefer to not own it. Maybe you need to do some research. Patents are construed in exactly the same way as any other law.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      I don't know what your legal credentials are (are you a lawyer?). I had an article cited in an amicus brief to SCOTUS for the CLS Bank case, plus a shorter one in Law360. What have you published? Aside from that, I helped with numerous claim construction briefs. I highly recommend you educate yourself about the distinction between common law and statutory law, since you seem confused: > A clarification of the term "common law" is in order at this point. While common law may have originally referred to a body of law thought to exist in common across jurisdictions under generally accepted standards of legal reasoning, I use the term here to distinguish statutory law made by legislators from case law made by courts. It is well understood that each state has its own common law, crafted by its courts under the supervision of the state supreme court, subject only to the supremacy of federal statutory and constitutional law. https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2868&context=faculty_scholarship https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2... https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2432&context=vlr https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a... Corporations' relationship to their contractors is most definitely not "common law." At most, it's administrative law, and if we come to questions of interpretation, it's statutory law.
      - deelowe 3y ago
        I'm not talking about contracts. I'm talking about labor laws and there have been prior instances where interpretations of labor law, the intent of the law, and how contractors were treated trumped what was written in the contracts (e.g. permatemps).
        AlbertCory 3y ago
        I don't even know what you're talking about anymore. Contracts? What does that have to do with it and when did those come up? Before, you were "not trying to be rude" about "common law," and I just demonstrated that common law has nothing to do with labor laws. Common law is judge-written law developed over centuries, as those references I gave you lay out. Labor laws are statutory law, sometimes modified by administrative rulings. As I said at the start of this, laws are construed by judges, much like patent claims are. Whether Amazon's indirect contractors are "employees" or not comes down to judges' constructions of the relevant laws, which in turn is influenced by the briefs submitted by each side. That's why California has had voter initiatives to change the laws. So what is the dispute, again?
dragonwriter 3y ago
> They interpret what the law says, not what it "intends." Within the bounds of the viable interpretations of the words actually written into the law, courts are, in fact, often guided by their reading of legislative intent in choosing which of the superficially viable interpretations is correct. The idea that interpreting what the laws say precludes interpreting what legislators mean seems to implicitly invoke the idea that any given set of words has only one tenable interpetation to start with, so you never need to look to external context to resolve meaning. This is a not-too-unpopular conceit, but its quite wrong.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  "quite wrong" -- no, you're wrong. "legislative intent" is in fact deeply controversial among judges. What counts as "intent"? Something a bill sponsor said, but other sponsors disagreed with? the only certain thing is what the bill says, and the fact that it passed.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    They claimed a specific thing is quite wrong. "the idea that any given set of words has only one tenable interpetation to start with" Do you really disagree with that claim? If legal words only had one tenable intepretation we could resolve contract disputes so quickly...
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      > Do you really disagree with that claim? why don't you say what language is being misinterpreted, and we'll go from there?
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Okay, let's start with "the entire body of law". If even a small fraction of laws have multiple tenable interpretations then that comment is correct. If you don't think that's the case for some laws, then I'm shocked. And this is before introducing the concept of "legislative intent", this is just at the base level of looking at the text of laws.
patmorgan23 3y ago
Legislative intent is a factor in statutory interpretation. You start with the text of the law and read it using the statutory interpretation statue. If it's still unclear then you look at legislative intent and previous interpretations to fill in the blanks.