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Many people here are claiming that it has to try to do with being unambiguously expressive, but many laws are excessively verbose, largely incomprehensible, and

Many people here are claiming that it has to try to do with being unambiguously expressive, but many laws are excessively verbose, largely incomprehensible, and still extremely ambiguous, most often in sections that constrain the scope of a law. By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. In my ever cynical opinion it's largely just a means of accumulating power without accountability. For instance in the terms and conditions of basically all major software now a days it says little more than "You forfeit all rights, we reserve any and all rights imaginable, and we can change this whenever want." But if it actually said this then people might be inclined to say 'hey that's not cool.' But when it's instead wrapped in page after page of incomprehensible legalese, people don't even bother trying to see what they're agreeing to.

afiori 2y ago
I think that it is more about working around limitations, a TOS saying "I can do whatever I want, you cannot" might not hold on the basis of being too general, so you list all the areas where you can do whatever you want. Also if by law the user has some rights sometimes you might want to be careful to avoid contradicting them. Overall the cost of adding another paragraph is fixed and negligible and the possible gain in loss prevention is considerable
pavel_lishin 2y ago
> By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. I don't think that's an accurate representation of the Constitution. I'd that we've seen clear examples of when the plain language of even the first two amendments has not worked just fine, and resulted in harm and litigation all the way to the Supreme Court.
- ffk 2y ago
  Since the 90s, New Zealand laws have been written in clear, modern, accessible English. The end result is the broader population understands it more and can also reason about it while it’s up for debate before being passed. I think the ambiguity in the first two amendments has to do more with the specific text rather than plain English itself being deficient.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    Indeed. Some legalese is intentionally ambiguous, and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's no so good.
  - snowfarthing 2y ago
    I think the ambiguity of the first two amendments -- heck, the Fourth has been gutted almost to non-existence by all the exceptions the Supreme Court has made over the years -- is the desire of certain people, particularly ones who are in favor of government control, to control their fellow citizens in ways those citizens may very well be unhappy about. This isn't just a Constitution problem, either: it happens with all law, to one degree or another, and in all levels of government, from HOAs all the way up to the Federal and even International ones. The issue isn't the wording, though -- it's humans being human, for better and for worse. While we can try to mitigate the problems arising from humans being human, there's only so much we can do!
mjburgess 2y ago
There's a difference between regulations, laws and constitutional principles -- which in my view, shouldn't really be regarded as laws at all. At highest fidelity, and least ambiguity, is a regulation since it applies to a highly specific context, and seeks to regulate relatively easy to name and describe practices. The audience for a regulation is typically a regulator, ie., a part of the government. Regulations quantity over a finite number of institutions/bodies/practices which are generally identifiable explicitly at the time, even if the law is written more broadly. Many socially inadept engineering types assume either all law should be like regulation, but this would be tyranny, since you cannot easily enumerate or describe the vast majority of scenarios "of legal concern", and the attempt reduces social interaction down to the worst sort of prescribed interactions. The audience for ordinary laws is judges (and somewhat, the police) -- to guide their decision-making when interpreting an unenumerable social scenario "of legal concern". These nevertheless concern scenarios with describable features, and its generally clear at least when they apply. These "general laws" quantify over an infinite number of possible "similar scenarios" whose similarity is giving by legal precedent and developed traditions of intepretation. Finally constitutional principles, in being "one sentence" are nothing really like laws at all. In my view their audience is a very strange sort of judge who is much closer to a moral philosopher. These principles are so radically underspecified that they can apply to almost any scenario relative to some philosophical framework. The purpose of constitutional principles is to limit the government under very broad ethical guidelines. So the audience there is the government, broadly. They exist to deter excessively immoral government action. As you can see each of these has radically different purposes and audiences, and none make any sense as anything like a programming language -- nor are they anything like each other.
GrantMoyer 2y ago
> By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. To be fair, the Bill of Rights only works because it's been endlessly litigated, developing a large body of specific interpretaions. Together, all these interpretations would take far, far more than a couple of sentences to write out. However, any issue of contention will be endlessly litigated regardless of how specific the written law is.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  And to that extent, the Bill of Rights only works because the government finds it generally does not apply. For example, practically none of it applies to students at this point.
  - cynicalpeace 2y ago
    The Bill of Rights works because of the genius of the people who wrote it at the time. It starts to not work because of the lust for power of the people in charge of our bloated government now. This is a minority opinion on HN, but it's the correct one.
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      What are you using as a definition of "working"? Not asking as a bullshit fake question, your comment made me think about how one would even define that
      - cynicalpeace 2y ago
        I was just copying the phrase of the parent commenters. I like to speak freely. I like knowing I can defend my home. I like remaining silent when questioned by authorities. So if I can do those things- it's working. If I can't do those things, it's not working.
        deleted 2y ago
cynicalpeace 2y ago
The article backs up the common sense that laws are written in order to accumulate as much power for the State as possible. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."
- pnut 2y ago
  That's some lame brained Reagan BS. I can think of other terrifying words like "Your child's multimillion dollar hospital bill for livesaving procedures isn't covered and you must pay" "Police arrested you and provided no evidence, we're going to imprison you without due process" "Neighbour broke into your house while you were grocery shopping, changed the locks and now claims to own the property"
  - cynicalpeace 2y ago
    You've obviously never had the government show up at your door saying these words.
    - poncho_romero 2y ago
      I've had lots of very helpful interactions with government employees throughout my life. As a matter of fact, there have clearly been many more unambiguously positive experiences than negative ones. Of course, we are both just playing the anecdote game here, but why should that stop anyone from asserting opinion as fact?
      - cynicalpeace 2y ago
        I have also had "helpful interactions" with the government. However, I have also had people from the government show up at my door, unannounced, and these were indeed some of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Talk to other victims of state violence under communism, fascism, imperialism or even modern western democracies and it's quite obvious that this fear is justified. One way to frame it: "government showing up at your door" has murdered millions (billions?) of people. This is a historical fact. Not opinion. Not anecdote.
crazygringo 2y ago
> By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. No, that hasn't worked fine at all. Do you realize the amount of judicial interpretation and flip-flopping that has gone on over just the first two amendments? They're like the poster children for being under-specified.
- runako 2y ago
  I would say they are specified well, but the ramifications of those specifications are not politically palatable much of the time. As a current event, look at the push to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment provision on birthright citizenship. That provision is written quite clearly, but people do not like what it says and as a result we may as a country go through a period where we ignore it.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    No, they are not specified well. They are not specified well because they come into conflict with other rights, and it is not spelled out which rights take precedence in which circumstances. Nor does it have anything to do with "palatability". When the Bill of Rights was passed, they were never understood to be absolute. The first amendment was never understood to make defamation allowed, nor was the second meant to prohibit towns from preventing people from carrying their guns into taverns. All of this is extremely clear from commentary and practice at the time. Birthright citizenship is relatively unambiguous, as it is hard to imagine it in conflict with other rights. This is not the case, however, for many other rights.
    - runako 2y ago
      > Nor does it have anything to do with "palatability" Conflicts with other rights is a really good point that I missed. > Birthright citizenship is relatively unambiguous And yet it is currently a topic of debate. It's entirely possible it gets tossed in the coming years, at least until fashion changes again.
arlort 2y ago
> generally just a sentence or two Plus various volumes worth of self contradicting case law and principles going back centuries before settlements were even made in the americas
LorenPechtel 2y ago
The Bill of Rights works?! Elsewhere I have specifically used the 2nd amendment at an example of why simple laws don't work. Are arms permitted to everyone or only to members of a militia? And it's a binary, no restrictions on what type of arms. Look at current gun law vs the wording of the 2nd, how can you possibly relate the two?? (Although in some cases I can see other laws being relevant. There are things you can possess but neither store nor transport due to the rules around hazardous materials. Top of the list: Tannerite. You buy it as two separate containers, you're free to handle it as you choose. Once they're mixed it's a high explosive and subject to all the handling rules of high explosives. You can detonate it or you can destroy it, that's it. Also, high power amateur rocket motors. Lots of rules about storing and transporting them that are simply impossible for many users--think about what would happen in a fire.)
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I don’t think that says anything about the bill of rights. If anything it strengthens ops point that piling on this language is seemingly done to generate confusion and maybe even to enable selective enforcement of certain prosecution, as we’ve seen with the Hunter Biden fiasco.

afiori 2y ago

I think that it is more about working around limitations, a TOS saying "I can do whatever I want, you cannot" might not hold on the basis of being too general, so you list all the areas where you can do whatever you want. Also if by law the user has some rights sometimes you might want to be careful to avoid contradicting them. Overall the cost of adding another paragraph is fixed and negligible and the possible gain in loss prevention is considerable

pavel_lishin 2y ago

> By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. I don't think that's an accurate representation of the Constitution. I'd that we've seen clear examples of when the plain language of even the first two amendments has not worked just fine, and resulted in harm and litigation all the way to the Supreme Court.

ffk 2y ago
Since the 90s, New Zealand laws have been written in clear, modern, accessible English. The end result is the broader population understands it more and can also reason about it while it’s up for debate before being passed. I think the ambiguity in the first two amendments has to do more with the specific text rather than plain English itself being deficient.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  Indeed. Some legalese is intentionally ambiguous, and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's no so good.
- snowfarthing 2y ago
  I think the ambiguity of the first two amendments -- heck, the Fourth has been gutted almost to non-existence by all the exceptions the Supreme Court has made over the years -- is the desire of certain people, particularly ones who are in favor of government control, to control their fellow citizens in ways those citizens may very well be unhappy about. This isn't just a Constitution problem, either: it happens with all law, to one degree or another, and in all levels of government, from HOAs all the way up to the Federal and even International ones. The issue isn't the wording, though -- it's humans being human, for better and for worse. While we can try to mitigate the problems arising from humans being human, there's only so much we can do!

mjburgess 2y ago

There's a difference between regulations, laws and constitutional principles -- which in my view, shouldn't really be regarded as laws at all. At highest fidelity, and least ambiguity, is a regulation since it applies to a highly specific context, and seeks to regulate relatively easy to name and describe practices. The audience for a regulation is typically a regulator, ie., a part of the government. Regulations quantity over a finite number of institutions/bodies/practices which are generally identifiable explicitly at the time, even if the law is written more broadly. Many socially inadept engineering types assume either all law should be like regulation, but this would be tyranny, since you cannot easily enumerate or describe the vast majority of scenarios "of legal concern", and the attempt reduces social interaction down to the worst sort of prescribed interactions. The audience for ordinary laws is judges (and somewhat, the police) -- to guide their decision-making when interpreting an unenumerable social scenario "of legal concern". These nevertheless concern scenarios with describable features, and its generally clear at least when they apply. These "general laws" quantify over an infinite number of possible "similar scenarios" whose similarity is giving by legal precedent and developed traditions of intepretation. Finally constitutional principles, in being "one sentence" are nothing really like laws at all. In my view their audience is a very strange sort of judge who is much closer to a moral philosopher. These principles are so radically underspecified that they can apply to almost any scenario relative to some philosophical framework. The purpose of constitutional principles is to limit the government under very broad ethical guidelines. So the audience there is the government, broadly. They exist to deter excessively immoral government action. As you can see each of these has radically different purposes and audiences, and none make any sense as anything like a programming language -- nor are they anything like each other.

GrantMoyer 2y ago

> By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. To be fair, the Bill of Rights only works because it's been endlessly litigated, developing a large body of specific interpretaions. Together, all these interpretations would take far, far more than a couple of sentences to write out. However, any issue of contention will be endlessly litigated regardless of how specific the written law is.

sidewndr46 2y ago
And to that extent, the Bill of Rights only works because the government finds it generally does not apply. For example, practically none of it applies to students at this point.
- cynicalpeace 2y ago
  The Bill of Rights works because of the genius of the people who wrote it at the time. It starts to not work because of the lust for power of the people in charge of our bloated government now. This is a minority opinion on HN, but it's the correct one.
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    What are you using as a definition of "working"? Not asking as a bullshit fake question, your comment made me think about how one would even define that
    - cynicalpeace 2y ago
      I was just copying the phrase of the parent commenters. I like to speak freely. I like knowing I can defend my home. I like remaining silent when questioned by authorities. So if I can do those things- it's working. If I can't do those things, it's not working.
      - deleted 2y ago

cynicalpeace 2y ago

The article backs up the common sense that laws are written in order to accumulate as much power for the State as possible. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

pnut 2y ago
That's some lame brained Reagan BS. I can think of other terrifying words like "Your child's multimillion dollar hospital bill for livesaving procedures isn't covered and you must pay" "Police arrested you and provided no evidence, we're going to imprison you without due process" "Neighbour broke into your house while you were grocery shopping, changed the locks and now claims to own the property"
- cynicalpeace 2y ago
  You've obviously never had the government show up at your door saying these words.
  - poncho_romero 2y ago
    I've had lots of very helpful interactions with government employees throughout my life. As a matter of fact, there have clearly been many more unambiguously positive experiences than negative ones. Of course, we are both just playing the anecdote game here, but why should that stop anyone from asserting opinion as fact?
    - cynicalpeace 2y ago
      I have also had "helpful interactions" with the government. However, I have also had people from the government show up at my door, unannounced, and these were indeed some of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Talk to other victims of state violence under communism, fascism, imperialism or even modern western democracies and it's quite obvious that this fear is justified. One way to frame it: "government showing up at your door" has murdered millions (billions?) of people. This is a historical fact. Not opinion. Not anecdote.

crazygringo 2y ago

> By contrast some of the most fundamental laws in the nation, the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are generally just a sentence or two - and that works just fine. No, that hasn't worked fine at all. Do you realize the amount of judicial interpretation and flip-flopping that has gone on over just the first two amendments? They're like the poster children for being under-specified.

runako 2y ago
I would say they are specified well, but the ramifications of those specifications are not politically palatable much of the time. As a current event, look at the push to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment provision on birthright citizenship. That provision is written quite clearly, but people do not like what it says and as a result we may as a country go through a period where we ignore it.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  No, they are not specified well. They are not specified well because they come into conflict with other rights, and it is not spelled out which rights take precedence in which circumstances. Nor does it have anything to do with "palatability". When the Bill of Rights was passed, they were never understood to be absolute. The first amendment was never understood to make defamation allowed, nor was the second meant to prohibit towns from preventing people from carrying their guns into taverns. All of this is extremely clear from commentary and practice at the time. Birthright citizenship is relatively unambiguous, as it is hard to imagine it in conflict with other rights. This is not the case, however, for many other rights.
  - runako 2y ago
    > Nor does it have anything to do with "palatability" Conflicts with other rights is a really good point that I missed. > Birthright citizenship is relatively unambiguous And yet it is currently a topic of debate. It's entirely possible it gets tossed in the coming years, at least until fashion changes again.

arlort 2y ago

> generally just a sentence or two Plus various volumes worth of self contradicting case law and principles going back centuries before settlements were even made in the americas

LorenPechtel 2y ago

The Bill of Rights works?! Elsewhere I have specifically used the 2nd amendment at an example of why simple laws don't work. Are arms permitted to everyone or only to members of a militia? And it's a binary, no restrictions on what type of arms. Look at current gun law vs the wording of the 2nd, how can you possibly relate the two?? (Although in some cases I can see other laws being relevant. There are things you can possess but neither store nor transport due to the rules around hazardous materials. Top of the list: Tannerite. You buy it as two separate containers, you're free to handle it as you choose. Once they're mixed it's a high explosive and subject to all the handling rules of high explosives. You can detonate it or you can destroy it, that's it. Also, high power amateur rocket motors. Lots of rules about storing and transporting them that are simply impossible for many users--think about what would happen in a fire.)

kjkjadksj 2y ago
I don’t think that says anything about the bill of rights. If anything it strengthens ops point that piling on this language is seemingly done to generate confusion and maybe even to enable selective enforcement of certain prosecution, as we’ve seen with the Hunter Biden fiasco.