19 ms·

Caveat for for many of us overly rational thinkers: the powers that be deliberately are allowed to 'interpret' this code nondeterministically by many different

Caveat for for many of us overly rational thinkers: the powers that be deliberately are allowed to 'interpret' this code nondeterministically by many different means including its 'spirit,' admissibility of relevant information, manipulation of venue and participants, apparently even extrajudicial proceedings lately. In short, that allows a lawyer to answer almost any question with "it depends," and start billing.

lobotryas 13y ago
You make this sound like a bad thing. Would you really prefer "black and white" laws that leave zero room for flexibility or interpretation in light of a given situation?
- tsax 13y ago
  I suspect he's simply warning against mistaking the formal spec (US code) for enforcement.
  - gohrt 13y ago
    Just as you shoulding mistake the formal spec (requirements document) for an explanation of how software works.
- saraid216 13y ago
  I've never been able to decide whether or not we should rigorously enforce Title 4 Chapter 1. On one hand, such enforcement would be ridiculously overbearing. On the other hand, such enforcement would be ridiculously overbearing.
- jamieb 13y ago
  Yes, we should have black and white laws, and unit tests for them. So someone could write a unit test for "Will this allow the NSA to create a secret court that is outside the rule of law?" or "Does accessing a university computer that has an open access policy allow for a sentence of 130 years?" I believe we'd see a lot simpler laws.
  - rmc 13y ago
    I think that's impossible with the current English language, and the fact that human beings disagree about lots of things.
    - jamieb 13y ago
      That's my point.
    - minor_nitwit 13y ago
      you wouldn't write in English, you'd write it in Lisp.
      - liscovich 13y ago
        Do you know of any examples of actual legal documents written in Lisp, or some other formal language?
        minor_nitwit 13y ago
        haha, no. It was meant as a quasi-joke. I'd like to see one though. Certain laws are very cut-and-dry (speeding for instance) and perhaps laws could be proven on a functional basis. You could even make it axiomatic from the constitution and declaration of independence. Of course, you'd need to define the axiomatic meaning of things like 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed' - which is hard to do even with such simple language. And then after loading the axioms, you'd spend a lifetime going through errors in the existing laws.
        rmc 13y ago
        Certain laws are very cut-and-dry (speeding for instance) Ha! No. * do you want to give an exemption for speeding for, say, ambulances? So how do you define "ambulance"? Do you have to be registered to drive an ambulance? What defines the "duty of an ambulance" (or are they allowed to speed no matter what). What about a van carrying an organ to be donated? * What if I have my sick child in the car and I'm rushing them to the hospital because it's faster than waiting for an ambulance? Is it right that I can be arrested and convicted for that? I think that would be a perversion of the spirit of any just law. * What if I'm being chased by a maniac relative who wants to kill me? Can I speed then to drive away from them? Do I have to believe my life is in danger? How do you define that? * Let's pretend I'm driving along and some other vehicle is about to move into my lane and crash into me because they are stupid and don't see me, and let's pretend that if I speed up a little bit (over the speed limit) and am able to get in front of them and avoid an accident. Should I be convictable for speeding even though I sped to prevent an accident? Sure, these are all edge cases and there are loads of cases where it is clear cut, but you have to write a law that can handle the edge cases. Without accepting the vagueness of human life, you'll wind up with an unfair conviction that is horrible.
- ISL 13y ago
  When that black and white law is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. I'll go with yes. Alas, interpretation then falls to the definition and grammar of every part of said law.
  - andrewfong 13y ago
    Worth noting that definition and grammar are also contextual. Define "speech". Does that include visual images in video games? Grammatically no. Clearly not contemplated by the founders. But absolutely a fundamental part of free speech given the current times.
  - gsnedders 13y ago
    What constitutes "establishment" of religion? Does this mean congress can make no law about what a teacher teaches (this will abridge their free speech, at least in a temporal sense)?
- thwarted 13y ago
  This preference isn't even black and white. One quote that sticks in my mind is this one from P.J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores, concerning Ken Starr's written position on a flag-desecration law: Congress had "acted narrowly." (That is, the law is very specific, and you can't be arrested for having a smart look on your face near the flag or anything like that—which is good because being specific is the essence of lawmaking and the whole difference between having a congress and having a mom.) The point here is that specificity is good so that J. Random Citizen can easily know if they are breaking the law or not. But this is the reason that we have the ability to have the law interpreted on a case-by-case basis, which is different from interpreting "laws", the specific as-written instances. Note that the Supreme court doesn't hear or decide on a law randomly, only when someone brings a specific case to them. The law should be written as "it's a crime to kill someone" (although, that may be too specific, and a more appropriate wording may be "it's a crime to rob someone of their life and livelihood"), and it's up to the executive and judicial branches to decide (or aid in deciding in the case of the executive) what the punishment should be. This is the defendant's "day in court", as it were. I think too many people do treat the law as absolute in wording, rather than absolute in spirit. A law that enforces something unjustly on the defendant is just as bad as a law that doesn't justly enforce the plaintiff's rights. Finding that appropriate middle ground is the basis for the grey area that is the interpretation of law. IANAL.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > The law should be written as "it's a crime to kill someone" (although, that may be too specific, and a more appropriate wording may be "it's a crime to rob someone of their life and livelihood") Either of your examples would involve me still technically breaking the law if I kill someone while trying to save myself from being murdered by that person, even if I do eventually receive a lenient sentence.
    - thwarted 13y ago
      Either of your examples would involve me still technically breaking the law if I kill someone while trying to save myself from being murdered by that person, even if I do eventually receive a lenient sentence. Of course. It's hard to deny that you killed someone if you killed them in self-defense. And that's why there is value is having law be interpreted on a case-by-case basis. The judiciary could determine, because it was self-defense per your examples, that you didn't "technically break the law" because the law as worded is weak. This is the iterative nature of developing laws. If too many people were found to not be breaking the law as written after review, then the laws, and the wording thereof, should be updated to account for that by being more explicit and producing less grey area.
- andrewfong 13y ago
  To bring this into context, legislatures have actually been trying to reduce flexibility in several areas of the law recently, most notably in sentencing guidelines. This can result in some bizarrely harsh sentences -- where a domestic violence victim firing a warning shot at her abuser gets 20 years in prison, or where someone who knowingly writes a bad check gets 25 years in prison.
rayiner 13y ago
Interpretation isn't an unguided, irrational process. When your lawyer answers "it depends" its because you've placed him at one point in what's really a decision tree and asked him: "where does it end?" It's like asking a programmer whether a particular token in a C++ program is a type name or an identifier. It depends. If you imagine the universe of human activity as a multi-dimensional space, you can think of laws as carving out subspaces with lines (that may be more or less fuzzy) and attaching significance to particular subspaces. If I ask: "my x coordinate is 5, where am I?" what do you answer?
- DannyBee 13y ago
  For the answer, see my future law review paper "A complete multi dimensional polytope model of US law"
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I'm not writing one of those either :-) ...although there's been some interesting work from Dan Katz at UMich summarizing progress in this area http://computationallegalstudies.com/ http://computationallegalstudies.com/
DannyBee 13y ago
"In short, that allows a lawyer to answer almost any question with "it depends," and start billing. " No, this is usually "lack of sufficient facts to answer question". If a crime has 4 elements, and you've said you've committed 3 and maybe the 4th depending on how you look at it, the answer to the question "can i be convicted" is "it depends", because it depends on the argument about the 4th element. If your followup is to claim that there should never be questions about whether you've achieved some element of a crime, it should be binary, that's simply impossible. Crimes, for example, are often about intent and causation. Until science provides us with historical mind reading devices, and completely accurate point-in-time reconstruction of the world, we're going to have to rely on various theories and evidence (much like science relies on theories and evidence). Even point-in-time reconstruction wouldn't solve all causation issues, because the issue is often a fairness one: Is it fair to hold the defendant liable for a crime X steps removed from his own action.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Right. It should be noted that appellate practice, which is really where the big debates about legal interpretation happen, the "what does this comma mean" work, is not exactly a cash cow for the industry. It's a brand-building practice, but outside boutiques it's not what pays the rent. What pays the rent is factual disputes, where its pretty clear what the law is, but there is disagreement about who did what with what intent and how much did it cost.
OldSchool 13y ago
At least for me, accustomed to logic, determinism and mathematical models for laws of nature, this was actually a surprise. Instinctively I still find it distasteful, though I can't say I have anything better to offer other than the unrealistic ideal that all judges would be guaranteed to be truly impartial. I have never directly benefited nor been harmed by the nature of this 'code' either, unless you count getting out of traffic tickets by switching on a learned persona that has people skills.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > the unrealistic ideal that all judges would be guaranteed to be truly impartial. Even this isn't necessarily a good thing. Part of the value of a judge is having an empathetic element in the position of final arbiter. Decisions aren't always "GUILTY / NOT GUILTY"; they're often long-form essays discussing the merits of the case, the factors under consideration, the logic and reasoning behind the ultimate conclusion and so on. Math is nice because it can be reduced to a symbolic language. We're not at the point where we can reduce human beings to symbols yet.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    You can be empathetic to someone without being partial to them. But your point still stands. The reasoning and specificity of cases are what define common law precedent.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_the...
  - spiritplumber 13y ago
    Italian law defines itself as being complete at any given time. This is why I do not follow Italian law, because it's impossible to follow ipso facto. Is this formally consistent?
rmc 13y ago
No, judges (who mainly interpret words in laws and partially juries), are not allowed to just make things up all the time, which is what you're implying.
dsrguru 13y ago
HN's InclinedPlane put this sad reality of the legal system into perspective wonderfully: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753117 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753117
rhizome 13y ago
It doesn't matter as much as you say. The fact is, at the very least we can now know better where the fenceposts are, and this will have the undeniable effect of creating a more educated citizenry. A secondary effect is that motivated people can now create tools that reveal ways in which legislators are positioned in relation to those fence posts, and why their interpretations (such as they may be rationalized in accordance with your observation regarding law enforcement) are positioned where they are. Perhaps most importantly, this will serve to make the law shallower. Currently, many laws are passed with large parts in reference to other laws, definitions from 400 pages elsewhere in the text (themselves with referential connections to disparate locations), and providing a way to analyze the law programmatically will have inevitable analytical benefits that allow citizens to know exactly how the sausage is made, whose farm the animals are coming from, and how it's been spiced.
novaleaf 13y ago
The US legal system is case law. of course, that makes interpretation even more non-deterministic, as you depend on your $10,000/hr legal team to dig up favorable ruleings
harryh 13y ago
If I used a LinkedList in my code instead of an Array will it speed things up? It depends...
brown9-2 13y ago
What you've described is a trait of human beings, not politicians and lawyers.
jacques_chester 13y ago
With respect, only someone who hasn't studied law could say this. Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. Unlike lawyers, we can simply will some of that away. We can make an enum which smooshes together disparate phenomena, that feeds a dropdown list and require the customers to use it. We can ignore very rare corner cases and include a comments field. We can do a lot of things to simply make essential complexity go away while we bicker amongst ourselves about accidental complexity. Law can't do that. Law must treat all cases, all combinations, as they arise. Every single day a configuration of people, motives and circumstances emerges that has never before emerged, could not have been foreseen and which may never occur again. The law must still apply. Law is hard because the problem domain is everything humans do. Let me know how many story points you think that scope is worth.
- genwin 13y ago
  > Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. True, yet I'm convinced by obvious ambiguity that it's on purpose, to feed the legal industry. That conviction is bolstered by all the "work" Congress does on reviving sunset clauses on laws that had no good reason to sunset.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Again, I must insist that folk can only take this view because they have not studied law. Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. The complexity of law is emergent from the problem domain. It doesn't require a conspiracy against the public to be that way. It merely requires the existence of a sufficiently large and diverse public.
    - shabble 13y ago
      > Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. Although it seems like there is also the accretion of "legalistic debt" (c.f. technical debt) when changes are made in response to (the perception of) urgent, high-profile problems. It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existing laws than it is to write a new, much simpler version that would cover all the same ground, get it passed, and repeal the older version. I'm also curious about what effect changes to a particular law have on precedent based on an interpretation of an older version.
jval 13y ago
I can't believe that comments like this get upvoted by the same people who decry the practice of viewing programmers as monkeys or typists. Good luck starting your own country with a legal system that doesn't require interpretation, or heaven forbid, lawyers.
Monkeyget 13y ago
There is this wonderful article by John Hasnas, "The Myth of the rule of law". It brings a number of very interesting ideas: * The law is inconsistent and possess contradictory rules. From contradictory premises, sound arguments * It gives concrete examples of legal cases and how completely opposite judgments could be rendered, both being based on correct use of laws and analysis. * Laws are not applied impartially, are not neutral, apolitical nor objectively applicable by judges. People who believe they live under "a government of laws and not people" tend to view their nation's legal system as objective and impartial. Obey and subject themselves. * There is a cognitive dissonance between the laws and the people who make them. People generally believe that the law are generally good and should be obeyed. People generally believe that politicians tend to be corrupt and influenced. The people who make the law cannot be trusted but yet the laws they write should be.

lobotryas 13y ago

You make this sound like a bad thing. Would you really prefer "black and white" laws that leave zero room for flexibility or interpretation in light of a given situation?

tsax 13y ago
I suspect he's simply warning against mistaking the formal spec (US code) for enforcement.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Just as you shoulding mistake the formal spec (requirements document) for an explanation of how software works.
saraid216 13y ago
I've never been able to decide whether or not we should rigorously enforce Title 4 Chapter 1. On one hand, such enforcement would be ridiculously overbearing. On the other hand, such enforcement would be ridiculously overbearing.
jamieb 13y ago
Yes, we should have black and white laws, and unit tests for them. So someone could write a unit test for "Will this allow the NSA to create a secret court that is outside the rule of law?" or "Does accessing a university computer that has an open access policy allow for a sentence of 130 years?" I believe we'd see a lot simpler laws.
- rmc 13y ago
  I think that's impossible with the current English language, and the fact that human beings disagree about lots of things.
  - jamieb 13y ago
    That's my point.
  - minor_nitwit 13y ago
    you wouldn't write in English, you'd write it in Lisp.
    - liscovich 13y ago
      Do you know of any examples of actual legal documents written in Lisp, or some other formal language?
      - minor_nitwit 13y ago
        haha, no. It was meant as a quasi-joke. I'd like to see one though. Certain laws are very cut-and-dry (speeding for instance) and perhaps laws could be proven on a functional basis. You could even make it axiomatic from the constitution and declaration of independence. Of course, you'd need to define the axiomatic meaning of things like 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed' - which is hard to do even with such simple language. And then after loading the axioms, you'd spend a lifetime going through errors in the existing laws.
        rmc 13y ago
        Certain laws are very cut-and-dry (speeding for instance) Ha! No. * do you want to give an exemption for speeding for, say, ambulances? So how do you define "ambulance"? Do you have to be registered to drive an ambulance? What defines the "duty of an ambulance" (or are they allowed to speed no matter what). What about a van carrying an organ to be donated? * What if I have my sick child in the car and I'm rushing them to the hospital because it's faster than waiting for an ambulance? Is it right that I can be arrested and convicted for that? I think that would be a perversion of the spirit of any just law. * What if I'm being chased by a maniac relative who wants to kill me? Can I speed then to drive away from them? Do I have to believe my life is in danger? How do you define that? * Let's pretend I'm driving along and some other vehicle is about to move into my lane and crash into me because they are stupid and don't see me, and let's pretend that if I speed up a little bit (over the speed limit) and am able to get in front of them and avoid an accident. Should I be convictable for speeding even though I sped to prevent an accident? Sure, these are all edge cases and there are loads of cases where it is clear cut, but you have to write a law that can handle the edge cases. Without accepting the vagueness of human life, you'll wind up with an unfair conviction that is horrible.
ISL 13y ago
When that black and white law is: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. I'll go with yes. Alas, interpretation then falls to the definition and grammar of every part of said law.
- andrewfong 13y ago
  Worth noting that definition and grammar are also contextual. Define "speech". Does that include visual images in video games? Grammatically no. Clearly not contemplated by the founders. But absolutely a fundamental part of free speech given the current times.
- gsnedders 13y ago
  What constitutes "establishment" of religion? Does this mean congress can make no law about what a teacher teaches (this will abridge their free speech, at least in a temporal sense)?
thwarted 13y ago
This preference isn't even black and white. One quote that sticks in my mind is this one from P.J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores, concerning Ken Starr's written position on a flag-desecration law: Congress had "acted narrowly." (That is, the law is very specific, and you can't be arrested for having a smart look on your face near the flag or anything like that—which is good because being specific is the essence of lawmaking and the whole difference between having a congress and having a mom.) The point here is that specificity is good so that J. Random Citizen can easily know if they are breaking the law or not. But this is the reason that we have the ability to have the law interpreted on a case-by-case basis, which is different from interpreting "laws", the specific as-written instances. Note that the Supreme court doesn't hear or decide on a law randomly, only when someone brings a specific case to them. The law should be written as "it's a crime to kill someone" (although, that may be too specific, and a more appropriate wording may be "it's a crime to rob someone of their life and livelihood"), and it's up to the executive and judicial branches to decide (or aid in deciding in the case of the executive) what the punishment should be. This is the defendant's "day in court", as it were. I think too many people do treat the law as absolute in wording, rather than absolute in spirit. A law that enforces something unjustly on the defendant is just as bad as a law that doesn't justly enforce the plaintiff's rights. Finding that appropriate middle ground is the basis for the grey area that is the interpretation of law. IANAL.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > The law should be written as "it's a crime to kill someone" (although, that may be too specific, and a more appropriate wording may be "it's a crime to rob someone of their life and livelihood") Either of your examples would involve me still technically breaking the law if I kill someone while trying to save myself from being murdered by that person, even if I do eventually receive a lenient sentence.
  - thwarted 13y ago
    Either of your examples would involve me still technically breaking the law if I kill someone while trying to save myself from being murdered by that person, even if I do eventually receive a lenient sentence. Of course. It's hard to deny that you killed someone if you killed them in self-defense. And that's why there is value is having law be interpreted on a case-by-case basis. The judiciary could determine, because it was self-defense per your examples, that you didn't "technically break the law" because the law as worded is weak. This is the iterative nature of developing laws. If too many people were found to not be breaking the law as written after review, then the laws, and the wording thereof, should be updated to account for that by being more explicit and producing less grey area.
andrewfong 13y ago
To bring this into context, legislatures have actually been trying to reduce flexibility in several areas of the law recently, most notably in sentencing guidelines. This can result in some bizarrely harsh sentences -- where a domestic violence victim firing a warning shot at her abuser gets 20 years in prison, or where someone who knowingly writes a bad check gets 25 years in prison.

rayiner 13y ago

Interpretation isn't an unguided, irrational process. When your lawyer answers "it depends" its because you've placed him at one point in what's really a decision tree and asked him: "where does it end?" It's like asking a programmer whether a particular token in a C++ program is a type name or an identifier. It depends. If you imagine the universe of human activity as a multi-dimensional space, you can think of laws as carving out subspaces with lines (that may be more or less fuzzy) and attaching significance to particular subspaces. If I ask: "my x coordinate is 5, where am I?" what do you answer?

DannyBee 13y ago
For the answer, see my future law review paper "A complete multi dimensional polytope model of US law"
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I'm not writing one of those either :-) ...although there's been some interesting work from Dan Katz at UMich summarizing progress in this area http://computationallegalstudies.com/ http://computationallegalstudies.com/

DannyBee 13y ago

"In short, that allows a lawyer to answer almost any question with "it depends," and start billing. " No, this is usually "lack of sufficient facts to answer question". If a crime has 4 elements, and you've said you've committed 3 and maybe the 4th depending on how you look at it, the answer to the question "can i be convicted" is "it depends", because it depends on the argument about the 4th element. If your followup is to claim that there should never be questions about whether you've achieved some element of a crime, it should be binary, that's simply impossible. Crimes, for example, are often about intent and causation. Until science provides us with historical mind reading devices, and completely accurate point-in-time reconstruction of the world, we're going to have to rely on various theories and evidence (much like science relies on theories and evidence). Even point-in-time reconstruction wouldn't solve all causation issues, because the issue is often a fairness one: Is it fair to hold the defendant liable for a crime X steps removed from his own action.

rayiner 13y ago
Right. It should be noted that appellate practice, which is really where the big debates about legal interpretation happen, the "what does this comma mean" work, is not exactly a cash cow for the industry. It's a brand-building practice, but outside boutiques it's not what pays the rent. What pays the rent is factual disputes, where its pretty clear what the law is, but there is disagreement about who did what with what intent and how much did it cost.

OldSchool 13y ago

At least for me, accustomed to logic, determinism and mathematical models for laws of nature, this was actually a surprise. Instinctively I still find it distasteful, though I can't say I have anything better to offer other than the unrealistic ideal that all judges would be guaranteed to be truly impartial. I have never directly benefited nor been harmed by the nature of this 'code' either, unless you count getting out of traffic tickets by switching on a learned persona that has people skills.

saraid216 13y ago
> the unrealistic ideal that all judges would be guaranteed to be truly impartial. Even this isn't necessarily a good thing. Part of the value of a judge is having an empathetic element in the position of final arbiter. Decisions aren't always "GUILTY / NOT GUILTY"; they're often long-form essays discussing the merits of the case, the factors under consideration, the logic and reasoning behind the ultimate conclusion and so on. Math is nice because it can be reduced to a symbolic language. We're not at the point where we can reduce human beings to symbols yet.
- rtpg 13y ago
  You can be empathetic to someone without being partial to them. But your point still stands. The reasoning and specificity of cases are what define common law precedent.
anigbrowl 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_the...
- spiritplumber 13y ago
  Italian law defines itself as being complete at any given time. This is why I do not follow Italian law, because it's impossible to follow ipso facto. Is this formally consistent?

rmc 13y ago

No, judges (who mainly interpret words in laws and partially juries), are not allowed to just make things up all the time, which is what you're implying.

dsrguru 13y ago

HN's InclinedPlane put this sad reality of the legal system into perspective wonderfully: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753117 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753117

rhizome 13y ago

It doesn't matter as much as you say. The fact is, at the very least we can now know better where the fenceposts are, and this will have the undeniable effect of creating a more educated citizenry. A secondary effect is that motivated people can now create tools that reveal ways in which legislators are positioned in relation to those fence posts, and why their interpretations (such as they may be rationalized in accordance with your observation regarding law enforcement) are positioned where they are. Perhaps most importantly, this will serve to make the law shallower. Currently, many laws are passed with large parts in reference to other laws, definitions from 400 pages elsewhere in the text (themselves with referential connections to disparate locations), and providing a way to analyze the law programmatically will have inevitable analytical benefits that allow citizens to know exactly how the sausage is made, whose farm the animals are coming from, and how it's been spiced.

novaleaf 13y ago

The US legal system is case law. of course, that makes interpretation even more non-deterministic, as you depend on your $10,000/hr legal team to dig up favorable ruleings

harryh 13y ago

If I used a LinkedList in my code instead of an Array will it speed things up? It depends...

brown9-2 13y ago

What you've described is a trait of human beings, not politicians and lawyers.

jacques_chester 13y ago

With respect, only someone who hasn't studied law could say this. Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. Unlike lawyers, we can simply will some of that away. We can make an enum which smooshes together disparate phenomena, that feeds a dropdown list and require the customers to use it. We can ignore very rare corner cases and include a comments field. We can do a lot of things to simply make essential complexity go away while we bicker amongst ourselves about accidental complexity. Law can't do that. Law must treat all cases, all combinations, as they arise. Every single day a configuration of people, motives and circumstances emerges that has never before emerged, could not have been foreseen and which may never occur again. The law must still apply. Law is hard because the problem domain is everything humans do. Let me know how many story points you think that scope is worth.

genwin 13y ago
> Law is complicated and filled with ambiguity because the world is complicated and filled with ambiguity. True, yet I'm convinced by obvious ambiguity that it's on purpose, to feed the legal industry. That conviction is bolstered by all the "work" Congress does on reviving sunset clauses on laws that had no good reason to sunset.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Again, I must insist that folk can only take this view because they have not studied law. Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. The complexity of law is emergent from the problem domain. It doesn't require a conspiracy against the public to be that way. It merely requires the existence of a sufficiently large and diverse public.
  - shabble 13y ago
    > Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler. Although it seems like there is also the accretion of "legalistic debt" (c.f. technical debt) when changes are made in response to (the perception of) urgent, high-profile problems. It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existing laws than it is to write a new, much simpler version that would cover all the same ground, get it passed, and repeal the older version. I'm also curious about what effect changes to a particular law have on precedent based on an interpretation of an older version.

jval 13y ago

I can't believe that comments like this get upvoted by the same people who decry the practice of viewing programmers as monkeys or typists. Good luck starting your own country with a legal system that doesn't require interpretation, or heaven forbid, lawyers.

Monkeyget 13y ago

There is this wonderful article by John Hasnas, "The Myth of the rule of law". It brings a number of very interesting ideas: * The law is inconsistent and possess contradictory rules. From contradictory premises, sound arguments * It gives concrete examples of legal cases and how completely opposite judgments could be rendered, both being based on correct use of laws and analysis. * Laws are not applied impartially, are not neutral, apolitical nor objectively applicable by judges. People who believe they live under "a government of laws and not people" tend to view their nation's legal system as objective and impartial. Obey and subject themselves. * There is a cognitive dissonance between the laws and the people who make them. People generally believe that the law are generally good and should be obeyed. People generally believe that politicians tend to be corrupt and influenced. The people who make the law cannot be trusted but yet the laws they write should be.