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Pulsifer v. United States, a case that turns on a federal law’s use of “and”
- 0xDEFACED 3y agoSeems the discrepancy is more related to whether the “not” is applied like: !A && !B && !C or: !(A && B && C) which the informed readers knows is equivalent to !A || !B || !C So a little more nuanced than what “and” means. This article would have been great to use in a lesson in the logic unit when I used to teach geometry.
- hackernewds 3y agoFascinating. Thank you for sharing this very palatable analogy, instantly spoke my language
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoBe good, or I shall inflict a 7..<10-variable Karnaugh map on thee. ;)
- tgv 3y agoFrom a linguistic standpoint, that’s a rather large nuance. Scoping is commonly accepted to be ambiguous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_(formal_semantics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_(formal_semantics)
- hackernewds 3y agoThis is where the Oxford Comma, largely not adopted in the US, is your friend
- gnicholas 3y agoReally? I see it here all the time. It's also apparently preferred by the majority of Americans, by polling: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elitist-superfluous-or-popular-we-polled-americans-on-the-oxford-comma/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elitist-superfluous-or-...
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoI love the Harvard comma because it creates a balanced list. For certain sentences, semicolons are sometimes needed in lieu of commas to introduce greater grouping when formatted text is unavailable: Mary visited New York City, New York; Chicago, Illinois; and San Francisco, California.
- bumby 3y agoAlternatively, according to Kurt Vonnegut: >"Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoWell, that's impractical pseudo-advice stemming from another kind of snobbery: that of ostentatious, pseudo-anti-intellectualism layered with a patina of confrontational, extravagant language like a 2nd-year English major trying to impress. Been There; Saw That; Bought The T-Shirt.
- bumby 3y agoI think you are taking it a little too seriously. Vonnegut joked around a lot. His signature was purposefully designed to look like an asshole. I wouldn’t read so much into it.
- chongli 3y agoYes, this is one of De Morgan’s laws. When I read the legislation I interpreted it to mean that the negation distributed over the conjunction, resulting in a disjunction. Insisting that the conjunction survives is faulty logic!
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoIt's faulty logic when working in a formal language. The English language that the laws are written in is unfortunately ambiguous in this case.
- firebat45 3y agoThe two examples in the article are "Don't drink and drive" vs "the patient shouldn’t eat any food, drink any liquids, and smoke". It seems abundantly clear to me that the second example is poorly worded and should say "or" instead of "and". The same goes for the actual court case. Arguing that "and" actually means "or" makes very little sense.
- andersa 3y agoThe way it is written, it suggests that they're not allowed to have all 3 simultaneously. not (A and B and C) But then if you think about it in context, that law would make little to no sense. So likely they intended "or". I have no idea how this works in the US, but here judges are told to follow the intention of the law and not the precise text. You wouldn't get out because someone made a grammar error.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoLegislative intent matters in the US, but we have some schools of legal thought that are pretty skeptical of it, so it's not always the end-all. (The concern being, every time a court uses legislative intent to disregard the statutory text, it becomes a little bit harder for someone to understand what the laws that govern them are.)
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoConsidering the number of "Originalists" on the court, you would think it is well established. Or is that just for the SC where judges have more latitude in getting the verdict they want?
- Eggsellence 3y ago[flagged]
- mjburgess 3y agoI suspect it has more to do with the imprisoning of people for drug offences, non-violent crime, and the background of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra... I also suspect the judiciary is not happy with 'mandatory minimums' which ties their hands, and make them pawns in this larger mass incarceration project
- deadbeeves 3y agoThe thing is, almost every time when people put negative conditions (that you must not meet in order to qualify for something else) every condition is disqualifying, and that idea is expressed with "or". Which of these sounds more natural to you? "You can have some of my pie if you don't have eggs, sausages, and bacon." "You can have some of my pie if you don't have eggs, sausages, or bacon." To me the second one sounds more natural. The first one sounds very unusual. I can have pie only on the condition that I don't have all three things? Okay... It sounds so strange because no one ever says that. I can't see someone using "and" there if they didn't mean it, because it's such an unusual grammatical construction.
- grecy 3y ago[flagged]
- teo_zero 3y agoUnfortunately laws and rules and even road signs are often written in ambiguous ways. My pet peeve is "a, except b, and c". Does the "and" goes with a or with b? Unambiguous language should use parentheses like maths do. Or avoid negatives ("not", "except", etc.).
- abigail95 3y agoWhat a waste of time to be a court case. Go and tell your congres to vote on either outcome and whichever side has the most votes wins. The court should have refused the case as non justiciable, it takes 2 votes in a single afternoon to settle a binary question of legislative intent.
- whatshisface 3y agoIt is not lawful to be tried under legislation that did not exist at the time you acted.
- qingcharles 3y agoThis wouldn't be altering the law they were convicted or sentenced under so ex post facto doesn't apply to this, even if that seems illogical. This is a later law that tries to reduce sentencing for some existing convictions, I believe.
- LaurenSerino 3y agoThis court case feels like the opening minutes of a high school speech and debate round when you have to define "definition" before you can get started. This is why i'd be a terrible lawyer...
- gxnxcxcx 3y ago> The court has become “more and more obsessed with language and grammar in recent years,” says Stanford Law professor Jeff Fisher. “Oral argument these days can seem like being in a sixth grade English class.” > “The Court has had cases, for example, that turned on the word ‘so’” and “the use of a definite article instead of indefinite (‘the’ instead of ‘a’),” he says. “This is all a product of the ascendancy of ‘textualism’—the theory of statutory construction that aims to discern precisely what the words Congress enacted mean, as opposed to what Congress probably intended to say.” Great news, if true, for nerds in comment sections everywhere trying to get away with treating the law as code by nitpicking the letter of the law.
- froh 3y agoas if the literalist Bible interpretation mind set creeped it's way into interpretation of legislation and thus day to day coexistence? instead of listening to the intent in good faith (pun intended) we stick with how _we_ interpret some word and what we believe the _text_ means?
- whatshisface 3y agoI think this will have the effect of increasing the latitude for judicial activism as unlikely interpretations of law as it is written become accepted on the basis of (ever-flexible) grammatical arguments.
- V__ 3y agoCan someone explain to me the thinking behind textualism? Isn't it obvious that language is imprecise and context matters? I just don't get it. I also don't understand why laws don't come with comments to better define the intended context.
- sidewndr46 3y agoIf the objective is to re-interpret long established laws to be mean something else, focusing on the grammatical details is as good of a justification as anything.
- a_bonobo 3y agoHere's another fun US Supreme Court decision in a similar vein: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/canceling-the-word-shall-in-leases-3494337/ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/canceling-the-word-shall-i... >In 1995, for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno that under certain contexts, shall could be construed as may. The decision does not imply that shall always means may, but rather that unless expressly defined, context determines whether shall is mandatory or precatory. [...] Congress also issued the Plain Writing Act of 2010 (the Act), which required all federal agencies to follow the federal plain language guidelines and use must instead of shall when imposing requirements.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoMakes sense to me. Which puts me against RFC 2119 [0] where must and shall are equal. > 1. MUST This word, or the terms "REQUIRED" or "SHALL", mean that the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification. [0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Someone 3y ago> Which puts me against RFC 2119 [0] where must and shall are equal. No, it doesn’t. The SC said “unless expressly defined”, and the RFC expressly defines it.
- RheingoldRiver 3y agoYeah but like...why bother? Use the more obvious term always & there's no need for ambiguity. If you're saying "these things mean the same thing" in a formal context then there should be a REALLY good reason why you need both of them to exist, period. Otherwise remove one and simplify what people need to know.
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- mindslight 3y agoGoing against what's plainly and clearly written in favor of an imagined complete opposite congressional "intent" would be appalling - how many congresscritters voted for the bill as a compromise precisely because the "and" made the section more permissive? And what about the general principle that ambiguity is decided against the drafter? This isn't a contract, but surely a similar principle should apply to the direct removal of individual liberty by the government. If congress didn't actually do the diligence to enact the more restrictive ruleset, then it seems that the correct judgement is the one that gives the government a lesser ability to keep people in cages.
- qingcharles 3y agoCourts have started moving away from giving the defendant the benefit in ambiguous situations like this. It's sad.
- danbmil99 3y agoOne word: parentheses
- hackernewds 3y agooxford commas*
- gnicholas 3y agoOr if they had just distributed the "not" to each of the three requirements below (assuming that is what they meant).
- nilslindemann 3y agoMost likely what was meant was "or", but the lawmakers made a mistake. The prisoner is not responsible for this, and therefore, the law must be interpreted literally. "and". Set him free.
- qingcharles 3y agoSadly the days are long gone when courts would give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, which was often the case in the past.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago100%. In criminal cases, the reasonable doubt standard should apply not only to the facts of the case, but to the law itself. There is reasonable doubt that the law says they must be imprisoned, therefore, they must go free.
- deepsun 3y agoThe real issue is that it was a poor job of law writers. Bug in the code, if you wish. Now The Supreme Court spends their time fixing it.
- hackernewds 3y agoThe supreme court is not in the business of fixing laws, it is in the business of interpreting them.
- krapp 3y agoThe supreme court routinely "fixes" laws by providing a canonical interpretation of them, or else nullifying them altogether by declaring them unconstitutional. That is their business.
- qingcharles 3y agoThis happens with alarming regularity. I once read through the entire criminal code of Illinois and found about a dozen plain bugs like this just speed-reading it.
- joeframbach 3y ago> Justice Elena Kagan tackled that very example during Monday’s oral arguments, comparing it to a hypothetical medical test: > > > So you’re going in for a medical test and you receive something from the hospital, and it says, to receive this test, the patient should not, and then, you know, it has a list of things that the patient shouldn’t do, and it says the patient shouldn’t eat any food, drink any liquids, *and* smoke. So I’m going to assume…that you’re not a smoker. Do you feel perfectly able to eat and drink as much as you want? That isn't happening, though. I was curious so I looked at the last paperwork I have my hands on. It said "Do not:" and then there was a bullet point list, no conjunctions. I don't think it's ambiguous, and Kagan's argument here is disingenuous.
- ghayes 3y agoIn the above referenced example, it would say “or” if it means what Kagan implies. Cut it down to two items: “Do not: drink and drive” clearly allows the exclusive use of either.
- Someone 3y agoNo sample can guarantee it “isn’t happening, though”, let alone a n = 1 one, and the judge was mentioning a hypothetical medical test.
- deadbeeves 3y agoCan you remember a single time in your personal life when someone has given a list of prohibitions joined by "and" instead of "or"?
- Someone 3y ago“Don’t drink and drive” is the canonical example.
- deadbeeves 3y agoThat's not a list of prohibitions, though. It's a single prohibition: drink and drive is the one thing you shouldn't do.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoIs it possible to consult notes, arguments, and drafts made when Congress was working to create and negotiate the law? To learn more about the intent and thus how the law should be interpreted? Will SCOTUS do this?
- gnicholas 3y agoThis could happen, but the courts have become more textualist in recent decades. When I was in law school in the aughts, we learned about legislative intent. I imagine current law school students are taught about it, but told that it is disfavored, and only used as an argument of last resort.
- qingcharles 3y agoUsually a high court will refer to the recorded texts of legislative debates to help guide them in situations like this. But it might not have ever come up on the record.
- aragonite 3y agoWhat's being decided here is not so much the meaning of 'and' as whether (in this particular instance) to respect the (unintended) letter or to respect the spirit of the law. There are contexts where, somewhat puzzlingly, or(/and) is the more natural word to use, but where it's possible to argue that using and(/or) would have been more literally correct. For example: > How do you make a higher order function in Python? You have two choices: you can use nested scopes _or_ you can use callable objects. Here 'or' is the most natural word to use, but one could argue the more literally correct word to use would have been 'and'.
- tromp 3y agoBefore making the choice, both option 1 AND option 2 are indeed available to you. But semantically, the OR refers to a choice already made, where one option excludes the other.
- hackernewds 3y agoThank you for this excellent example. Another simplification: you can use nested scopes and callable objects vs you can use nested scopes and callable objects
- macromagnon 3y agoIt seems obvious to me that meeting any of the conditions disqualifies you. The points needed to satisfy one of the clauses goes down as the "seriousness" of the crime goes up. If you got 4 total points, you're out, but if you only have 2 points and it's due to a violent offense, you're also out.
- ashbee 3y agoYeah, agreed. Also if it were intended as "meeting all of the criteria disqualifies you", then part A is completely redundant, isn't it? If B and C are true then A is also true.
- sacrosancty 3y ago[dead]
- eloisant 3y agoThe thing with law is that you're not supposed to guess the intent of the writer, you're supposed to apply it exactly as it's written.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agonope. "normally" the court has to apply strict interpretation of the written text. if that strict interpretation leads to ambiguity or confusion or logical fallacy, then the court has to see the "legislative intent" of why the enactment was made in the first place in order to come to a reasonable conclusion as to what the framers of the law intended to be. if the word written is "and" meaning +, that would imply in strict sense that this is a condition that has to be followed along with other conditions. now, if someone says no, the legislative intent was not to be + but "or" because the enactment wants to provide relief and not to incur more punishment, and that applying the "+" interpretation would violate my fundamental rights, then the court can decide if the loose definition is justified from the legislative intent and can accept the same.
- ImJamal 3y agoI don't think anybody really agrees with that position. Let's take an extreme example The second amendment is: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The definition of an armament according to Britannica is: military weapons that are used to fight a war Nuclear bombs have been used by the US military to fight a war. By your logic the right of the people to have nuclear bombs is protected by the second amendment. Where can I get a nuke?
- Null-Set 3y agoDo the congressmen who voted for this bill get called to testify on how they interpreted it when making it law?
- gnicholas 3y agoIn general, the deference to 'legislative intent' has become less of a focus over the last couple decades. I don't think legislators have ever been called to testify in this manner, but even if they were it would not happen at the Supreme Court (or any other appellate court). Witnesses are only called at trial courts.
- qingcharles 3y agoNo, this has never happened that I know of. I just did 10 years in jail because of a mistake of putting an or instead of an and. Long story. What happens is that the judges can go back to all the formal recorded debates of the legislators concerning this law to try and figure out their intent. In my case it was just someone making a typing error because the police rushed into the legislative chamber and demanded a literal last-minute change to a completed bill. They fixed it six months later when someone noticed it. No helping anyone in the meantime who is affected by the error though. It is very, very rare that a judge will go against the wording of a law even if it is literally insane.
- dusted 3y agoIt seems obvious that this AND was added as one does a list of things, "Add sugar, flour AND water." but in a conditional, which makes it possible to construe a different meaning. In my understanding, the court should strive to interpret the law by its intention, and here it seems reasonable that the AND should not have been there. It should just have been "If any item in the following list of conditions are met [A, B, C]", even if it seems syntactically less polite, there's at least no ambiguity as to what it means.
- danbruc 3y agoJust look up what the intended meaning is, there must be drafts and revisions and discussions from the time the law was created, right? And then apply the intended meaning unless the affected party can make a reasonable case that they were aware of this law, followed it by the letter and should not bear the negative consequences of mistakes made while creating the law.
- anon_cow1111 3y agoThis is what I thought immediately; "this... may be slightly ambiguous. They must have case records somewhere to give me an idea." If YOU were a judge/jury, would you really want to stake years of someone's life over what ended up being a typo by an overworked intern? (Also, I think this could be a good argument against mandatory minimums, just out of principle)
- arh68 3y agoI've recently wondered about any [1]. It seems there are certain situations where I interpret any to mean all, or any and all: > from any floor, you can use the fire escape to reach the ground > ensure we have proper licensing for any software we depend upon > press any key, 3 times > aim to dress for any weather These seem obviously plural, but I don't know if I should expect everybody to agree. Clearly all would be better, when it makes sense. Still, more commonly, it's any single from the set of "all", for some all. [1] and not in the way written about at https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3248 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3248
- bruce343434 3y ago> press any key, 3 times Personally I don't read this as "press all keys 3 times" but "for all keys, you can press it 3 times <to continue>" but I agree with the rest. In that sense it is a universal quantifier to throw in a formal logic term.
- arh68 3y agoThat's the most ambiguous one. I'd say both QQQ & QWE would satisfy "press any key, 3 times". It's not necessarily saying to press the same key 3 times. "Press any 3 keys" isn't the same, because I could just press one key three times.
- bruce343434 3y agoI think "a key" makes it clear that there is one key, could be any of them, but you need to select one key. "Make any 3 key presses" would in my mind finally allow QWE and QQQ.
- deadbeeves 3y ago"Any" and "all" do have similar meanings, but you can't always simply replace "any" with "all" and retain the same meaning every time. "From any floor, you can use the fire escape to reach the ground" -> "It is true at all floors that you can use the fire escape to reach the ground". In this case you can replace "any" with "all" without changing the meaning; hypothetically one could interpret that to mean that while occupying all floors simultaneously you can use the fire escape to reach the ground, but since that's impossible (unless there's only a single floor) no one would interpret that sentence that way. "Ensure we have proper licensing for {any|all} software we depend upon". Again the meaning is preserved, because in this case "for all" is actually the more correct form. Every one will interpret "for any" correctly (as "for all"), but it could alternatively be interpreted to mean that you must have the license of at least one of said software. "Press any key, 3 times." -> "It is true of all keys that you can pick it and press it three times. Do so for one." Obviously the meaning changes if you just replace "any" with "all". A more subtle nuance is whether you're being asked to [press three times] [any key] or to [press any key] [three times]. "Aim to dress for any weather" -> "It is true of all weathers that you should aim to dress for it". This is the same case as the second example, it should have been "all". Otherwise there's an ambiguity that could be interpreted to mean that you should aim to dress for an arbitrary weather of your choosing. I would say that "any" when used in a declarative statement (such as your first example) means that the proposition is true for all members of the set under consideration. When used in an imperative statement (such as the other ones) sometimes will mean that you must apply the action to all members of the set, and sometimes that you're free to choose any subset and apply it to those. "Wash any dog" and "wash any dogs" and "for any dog, wash a cat" all mean different things.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoSurely this depends on what the meaning of is is.
- oldbbsnickname 3y agoA big oil company was a defendant in a billion dollar lawsuit. The case hinged on the interpretation of a comma in a safety code for boilers and pressure vessels, whether it meant "and" or "or". The expert witness' interpretation happened to be in the big oil company's favor because that was the intended meaning. When laws and safety codes are crafted, it's vital that they are expressed directly and unambiguously so there can be absolutely no doubt.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sorokod 3y agoPulsifer, I thought it was a completely made up name for Good Omens.
- crest 3y agoSo the question is `!(x && y && z)` vs `!x && !y && !z` in prose.
- manofmanysmiles 3y agoI didn’t check the referenced document, but wouldn’t be easier to ask the authors what they intended? Ultimately the words are a representation of meaning in someone’s mind.