5 ms·

Can you change your mind on a verbal agreement? That a court is likely to not find sufficient evidence to enforce it doesn't make changing you mind about it ri

Can you change your mind on a verbal agreement? That a court is likely to not find sufficient evidence to enforce it doesn't make changing you mind about it right/ethical once you've gained benefit from the agreement. If I get the community to help me build a orphanage, it is wrong for me to decide I rather do something else with the building once built.

ectoplasm 11y ago
I believe you're conflating laws which are objective and shared with morals/ethics which are subjective and personal. Something legal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me. Something illegal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me.
- boomshucka 11y ago
  I believe you are confused about the law. Laws are not objective. There are many, many cases brought before the courts where the facts are not in dispute.
  - ectoplasm 11y ago
    Can you clarify?
    - boomshucka 11y ago
      Which part isn't clear?
      - ectoplasm 11y ago
        All of the parts are unclear. I'm confused because the objectivity of a law depends on the facts in court cases being in dispute? When I use the word subjective, it means that an individual personally gets to decide the truth of something. You can't make something illegal just by changing your mind, but you can make it immoral. We probably have different understandings of subjectivity and objectivity.
        fixermark 11y ago
        Inconveniently, juries (and judges in non-criminal cases) do, in fact, make something legal or illegal by changing their minds. It is the function of a jury to decide questions of fact, because determining absolute objective truth in a courtroom scenario (from a scientific sense of the word) is often functionally impossible. So you're left with the situation where the plaintiff and defendant provide evidence that their respective versions of the truth are the objective reality, and the jury's subjective opinion of their case determines what the law agrees upon as objective. This interface between objective and subjective is the "magic" of the legal system. If you can argue in a court of law, successfully enough to convince a jury (or judge, depending on the criminal / civil nature of the case), that, say for instance, a corporation is a person in the same sense as an individual human being, then as far as the law is concerned it is now an objective truth that corporations are people.
        boomshucka 11y ago
        I'm not even talking about deciding questions of fact. If you take a set of facts as a given, it's still often not clear if something is legal or not. Legislation is often written in broad strokes and it is up to the courts to fill in the details. There are always new cases coming up that don't fit the same fact pattern as existing cases and hence no one is quite sure what the law says on such matter.
        boomshucka 11y ago
        Given a set of facts, it isn't always clear if something is legal or not. Hence, case law, and appeals and so on. Was obamacare illegal? It wasn't clear. A judgement has been made at this point, but to suggest it was an "objective" decision wouldn't be accurate. The supreme court judges could have just "decided" it was illegal if that was their opinion. Several did. The very existence of the supreme courts highlights the fact that the law is a subjective thing, there isn't some nice big leather bound book which you can just consult for every single situation and go "yep, ok, that's legal".
        ectoplasm 11y ago

ectoplasm 11y ago

I believe you're conflating laws which are objective and shared with morals/ethics which are subjective and personal. Something legal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me. Something illegal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me.

boomshucka 11y ago
I believe you are confused about the law. Laws are not objective. There are many, many cases brought before the courts where the facts are not in dispute.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  Can you clarify?
  - boomshucka 11y ago
    Which part isn't clear?
    - ectoplasm 11y ago
      All of the parts are unclear. I'm confused because the objectivity of a law depends on the facts in court cases being in dispute? When I use the word subjective, it means that an individual personally gets to decide the truth of something. You can't make something illegal just by changing your mind, but you can make it immoral. We probably have different understandings of subjectivity and objectivity.
      - fixermark 11y ago
        Inconveniently, juries (and judges in non-criminal cases) do, in fact, make something legal or illegal by changing their minds. It is the function of a jury to decide questions of fact, because determining absolute objective truth in a courtroom scenario (from a scientific sense of the word) is often functionally impossible. So you're left with the situation where the plaintiff and defendant provide evidence that their respective versions of the truth are the objective reality, and the jury's subjective opinion of their case determines what the law agrees upon as objective. This interface between objective and subjective is the "magic" of the legal system. If you can argue in a court of law, successfully enough to convince a jury (or judge, depending on the criminal / civil nature of the case), that, say for instance, a corporation is a person in the same sense as an individual human being, then as far as the law is concerned it is now an objective truth that corporations are people.
        boomshucka 11y ago
        I'm not even talking about deciding questions of fact. If you take a set of facts as a given, it's still often not clear if something is legal or not. Legislation is often written in broad strokes and it is up to the courts to fill in the details. There are always new cases coming up that don't fit the same fact pattern as existing cases and hence no one is quite sure what the law says on such matter.
      - boomshucka 11y ago
        Given a set of facts, it isn't always clear if something is legal or not. Hence, case law, and appeals and so on. Was obamacare illegal? It wasn't clear. A judgement has been made at this point, but to suggest it was an "objective" decision wouldn't be accurate. The supreme court judges could have just "decided" it was illegal if that was their opinion. Several did. The very existence of the supreme courts highlights the fact that the law is a subjective thing, there isn't some nice big leather bound book which you can just consult for every single situation and go "yep, ok, that's legal".
        ectoplasm 11y ago