4 ms·

No one is obliged to obey anything but the letter of the law. If you want someone to obey the spirit of a law you need to put that in the letter.

tsimionescu 3y ago
That is completely wrong. Judges very much care about the spirit of the law, and frequently discuss it in their decisions, both in common law jurisdictions and in other systems. The justice system is not a computer following logical instructions.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  Judges can talk about the spirit of the law all they want. If they don't base decisions on the letter of it they'll set themselves up to be overruled on appeal. Prosecutors also can't bring up charges on violating the spirit of a law.
  - ajross 3y ago
    So... appellate reasoning is even more likely to be founded on spirit arguments and not loopholes or context-free text readings. "Intent of the framers" is, obviously, very much an argument about spirit and not text. As always, there's a good wikipedia page to start from when discussing this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law But in this particular case it's sort of a silly argument anyway as it cuts better in the opposite direction: the DMA is a big and complicated law and can be interpreted in a zillion ways. If courts and regulators are allowed to read laws as strictly as they want, I can all but guarantee that Apple is in violation of something.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    To many legal scholars, and to most lay people, the actual law is the spirit, the letter is just there to help note down what the spirit was. If someone thinks they are safe to ignore the spirit of a law because of a quirk of how it is worded, they will often find they are wrong, and have charges brought against them anyway, and lose at trial and any number of appellate courts. Conversely, if someone is convicted based on a technicality where they broke the letter of the law, but not the spirit, that conviction is very likely to be overturned on appeal. Of course, the spirit and the letter of the law can't be arbitrarily divorced from one another. One can't claim that the letter of the law says "you shall not kill", but the spirit of the law is that it's ok to kill but only on the full moon. But if a law says "don't lie to prosecutors", and they ask me what I did on some day, and I tell them X and Y and don't mention Z, I won't be able to claim that the law didn't techniclaly say not to omit information.

tsimionescu 3y ago

That is completely wrong. Judges very much care about the spirit of the law, and frequently discuss it in their decisions, both in common law jurisdictions and in other systems. The justice system is not a computer following logical instructions.

giantrobot 3y ago
Judges can talk about the spirit of the law all they want. If they don't base decisions on the letter of it they'll set themselves up to be overruled on appeal. Prosecutors also can't bring up charges on violating the spirit of a law.
- ajross 3y ago
  So... appellate reasoning is even more likely to be founded on spirit arguments and not loopholes or context-free text readings. "Intent of the framers" is, obviously, very much an argument about spirit and not text. As always, there's a good wikipedia page to start from when discussing this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law But in this particular case it's sort of a silly argument anyway as it cuts better in the opposite direction: the DMA is a big and complicated law and can be interpreted in a zillion ways. If courts and regulators are allowed to read laws as strictly as they want, I can all but guarantee that Apple is in violation of something.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  To many legal scholars, and to most lay people, the actual law is the spirit, the letter is just there to help note down what the spirit was. If someone thinks they are safe to ignore the spirit of a law because of a quirk of how it is worded, they will often find they are wrong, and have charges brought against them anyway, and lose at trial and any number of appellate courts. Conversely, if someone is convicted based on a technicality where they broke the letter of the law, but not the spirit, that conviction is very likely to be overturned on appeal. Of course, the spirit and the letter of the law can't be arbitrarily divorced from one another. One can't claim that the letter of the law says "you shall not kill", but the spirit of the law is that it's ok to kill but only on the full moon. But if a law says "don't lie to prosecutors", and they ask me what I did on some day, and I tell them X and Y and don't mention Z, I won't be able to claim that the law didn't techniclaly say not to omit information.