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The worst part is, you have to have to actually violate the law to even get standing to ask the court "is this actually illegal".
by webstrand 2y ago
The worst part is, you have to have to actually violate the law to even get standing to ask the court "is this actually illegal".
- LorenPechtel 2y agoYeah. I'd like to see a system where a person or organization can put up say $100k, specify an act or series of acts and have it litigated as if it were real. There's no juries or the like as the "facts" are laid down at the start. You win, you get back your money and it becomes part of case law just as if it were real, including any compensation due innocent defendants. (Note that if the state is not required to defend it, they're free to immediately concede, return your money and admit the stated actions are legal.)
- telotortium 2y agoWhere are you going to get an appropriate set of facts from, though? You're essentially proposing a legal thought experiment, but thought experiments are notorious for setting up unrealistic sets of facts to be based on - how often does a scenario exactly like the trolley problem arise, and is it even justified to extrapolate any moral conclusions from that to other scenarios? There is a legal saying - "hard cases make bad law". The temptation in your system would be to make hard cases, for the same reason hard cases are prevalent in ethical philosophy. The effect on the resulting law is predictable. So you need to work essentially from cases that have gone through at least court case. That's called an appeal, and it already exists.
- LorenPechtel 2y agoIf the facts don't match reality you've gone to all the effort for nothing--people aren't going to do it. And if hard cases make bad law the legislature should do it's job and fix the law!