7 ms·

Law is a strange and possibly the only aspect in human societies where people are by default assumed to know, understand and follow it to the letter when everyb

by devsda 9mo ago

Law is a strange and possibly the only aspect in human societies where people are by default assumed to know, understand and follow it to the letter when everybody acknowledges that law is open to interpretation. You cannot in most cases claim ignorance as it can be abused by criminals. But there is whole industry of education, profession, journals, blogs, podcasts and videos trying to teach, interpret and explain the same laws. In the end it is decided by experts who have been practicing law for decades and even almost half of those experts may disagree on the right interpretation but a citizen is expected to always get it right from the start.

andrewflnr 9mo ago
Strange and destructive. I believe comprehensible law is a human right that is critically underacknowledged. Like, up there with the right to speech and a fair trial. If you cannot understand the law as it applies to you, you cannot possibly be free under that law, because your actions will always be constrained by your uncertainty.
- coderatlarge 9mo ago
  maybe we’re inching towards rule by law vs rule of law by making things so abstruse that you need a multiyear education to understand what is allowed, when and where.
  - pixl97 9mo ago
    As the complexity of the world increases this may naturally happen
    - coderatlarge 9mo ago
      perhaps it then becomes a matter of policy to periodically reformulate the law so it is compact and understandable and illustrated with examples for the general public. i wonder if llms will be able to do this reliably ever.
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago
  Seems to be less of an issue in practice, as the level of detail is pretty clear unless you're operating at the "bleeding edge" of legal understanding, in which case I imagine you can afford to hire someone to figure out the details to you. Perfect understanding of every law and its consequence is not possible anyway, because laws are meant to be contextual and interpreted by humans, to allow for exceptions in unusual cases (contrast that with the monumentally stupid idea of "law as code", which, if implemented, would grind us all under the gears). In vast majority of cases, people don't need more certainty than they have or can trivially get, because variance of outcome is low. E.g. you don't need to know the exact amount of dollars where shoplifting turns from misdemeanor into a felony - it's usually enough to know that you shouldn't do it, and that stealing some bread once to feed your kids will probably not land you in jail for long, but stealing a TV just might. And by "low variance" in outcomes I mean, there's obvious proportionality and continuity; it's not the case that if you steal bread brand A, you get a fine, but if you steal bread brand B, you go straight to supermax, right away. This is not to deny the ideal, but rather to point out that practical reality is much more mundane than picking apart unique court cases makes one think.
  - andrewflnr 9mo ago
    It's not about "unique court cases". Surely you must have noticed that whenever someone asks online whether it's legal to do some apparently reasonable but tricky thing, the answer is almost always "ask a lawyer"? How many of those people can actually afford a lawyer? Do you actually think it's ok for freedom to only exist for people who can afford lawyers?
    - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
      The answer is "ask a lawyer", because giving legal advice on the Internet is opening yourself to significant legal risk. That's true even if you are a lawyer - hence the "I'm a lawyer but not your lawyer" disclaimer.
      - andrewflnr 9mo ago
        Fine. You're still missing the point in favor of a technicality. Why does it have to be this way?
- RiverCrochet 9mo ago
  One of the awesome things about the American Constitution is that it's not really written in complicated language. Of course this hasn't made things straightforward or easy.
- gosub100 9mo ago
  A corollary to your second paragraph is that you can concentrate power if you keep the masses from understanding it fully or able to practice it competently. This is why passing the bar exam is so difficult. What if most criminals were as adept at fighting their charges as they are at physically fighting? (Meaning: won a healthy percentage of the time). The system is designed to crush people and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
sfdlkj3jk342a 9mo ago
In the end, we are at the mercy of those with power. Laws are just a way to make their decisions appear fair and appease the masses. If you piss off enough the wrong person with power, it doesn't matter what the laws say, you'll get screwed.
- earthnail 9mo ago
  Not quite that simple. Laws legitimise and stabilise those in power. If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. There are other means to gaining power, of course.
  - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
    > If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. I think this is why the thing judges hate the most is people admitting when the law gives them an unfair advantage. A rule that unjustly benefits someone is fine as long as they don't break kayfabe. Big Brother loves you, that's why you can't install apps on your phone, it's to protect you from harm. The incidental monopolization, censorship and surveillance are all totally unintentional and not really even happening. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Whereas, declare that you're shamelessly exploiting a loophole? Orange jumpsuit.
    - fc417fc802 9mo ago
      I agree, but that's the uncharitable interpretation. The charitable one is that intent matters. Those in power being threatened tends to strongly correlate with societal instability and a distinct lack of public safety. I may not always agree with the status quo but I don't want to live in Somalia either.
      - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
        "Intent matters" is the dodge. There is an action you can take that does two things. One, it makes it marginally more expensive to commit fraud. Two, it makes it significantly more expensive for your existing customers to patronize a competitor. If you do it, which of these things was it your intent to do? The answer doesn't change based on whether you announce it. You can fully intend to thwart competition without admitting it. And, of course, if the only way you get punished is if you admit it, what you really have is not a law against intending to do it but a law against saying it out loud. Which is poison, because then people knowingly do it without admitting it and you develop a culture where cheating is widespread and rewarded as long as the cheaters combine it with lying. Whereas if the law is concerned with knowledge but not "intent" then you'd have a law against thwarting competition and it only matters what anyone would expect to be the result rather than your self-proclaimed unverifiable purpose. But then it's harder to let powerful people get away with things by pretending they didn't intend the thing that everybody knew would be the result. Which is kind of the point.
robkop 9mo ago
Occam's Razor - this complexity arises from the human nature to try and build consistent abstractions over complex situations. It's exactly what we do in software too. To an outsider it's going to look nonsensical. I want to share a thought experiment with you - atop an ancient Roman legal case I recall from Gregory Aldrete - The Barbershop Murder. Suppose a man sends his slave to a barbershop to get a shave. The barbershop is adjacent to an athletic field where two men are throwing a ball back and forth. One throws the ball badly, the other fails to catch it, and the ball flies into the barbershop, hits the barber's hand mid-shave, and cuts the slave's throat-killing him. The legal question is posed: Who is liable under Roman law? - Athlete 1 who threw the ball badly - Athlete 2 who failed to catch it - The barber who actually cut the throat - The slave's owner for sending his slave to a barbershop next to a playing field - The Roman state for zoning a barbershop adjacent to an athletic field Q: What legal abstractions are required to apply consistent remedies to this case amongst others? Opinion: You'd need a theory of negligence. A definition of proximate cause. Standards for foreseeability. Rules about contributory fault. A framework for when the state bears regulatory responsibility. Each of those needs edge cases handled, and those edge cases need to be consistent with rulings in other domains. Now watch these edge cases compound, before long you've got something that looks absurdly complex. But it's actually just a hacky minimum viable solution to the problem space. That doesn't make it fair that citizens bear the burden of navigating it - but the alternative is inequal application of the law
- ralferoo 9mo ago
  > The legal question is posed: Who is liable under Roman law? My question is why does anybody have to be liable at all? Most normal people would consider this just to be a freak accident. Sure, there's learning points that can be taken from it to prevent similar incidents - e.g. erecting a fetch around the field (why didn't you suggest that the field owner be liable) as it can be reasonably foreseen the situation of a ball escaping and being a nuisance to someone else (maybe it just startles someone on the road, maybe it causes a car crash, whatever), or legislating bars or plastic film on the barber's window, etc. But here nobody seemed to act in any way negligently, nor was there any law or guidance that they failed to follow. It was just the result of lots of normal things happening that normally have no negative consequences and it's so unlikely to happen again that there's nothing useful to be gained by trying to put the blame on someone. It was just an accident.

by devsda 9mo ago

andrewflnr 9mo ago

Strange and destructive. I believe comprehensible law is a human right that is critically underacknowledged. Like, up there with the right to speech and a fair trial. If you cannot understand the law as it applies to you, you cannot possibly be free under that law, because your actions will always be constrained by your uncertainty.

coderatlarge 9mo ago
maybe we’re inching towards rule by law vs rule of law by making things so abstruse that you need a multiyear education to understand what is allowed, when and where.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  As the complexity of the world increases this may naturally happen
  - coderatlarge 9mo ago
    perhaps it then becomes a matter of policy to periodically reformulate the law so it is compact and understandable and illustrated with examples for the general public. i wonder if llms will be able to do this reliably ever.
TeMPOraL 9mo ago
Seems to be less of an issue in practice, as the level of detail is pretty clear unless you're operating at the "bleeding edge" of legal understanding, in which case I imagine you can afford to hire someone to figure out the details to you. Perfect understanding of every law and its consequence is not possible anyway, because laws are meant to be contextual and interpreted by humans, to allow for exceptions in unusual cases (contrast that with the monumentally stupid idea of "law as code", which, if implemented, would grind us all under the gears). In vast majority of cases, people don't need more certainty than they have or can trivially get, because variance of outcome is low. E.g. you don't need to know the exact amount of dollars where shoplifting turns from misdemeanor into a felony - it's usually enough to know that you shouldn't do it, and that stealing some bread once to feed your kids will probably not land you in jail for long, but stealing a TV just might. And by "low variance" in outcomes I mean, there's obvious proportionality and continuity; it's not the case that if you steal bread brand A, you get a fine, but if you steal bread brand B, you go straight to supermax, right away. This is not to deny the ideal, but rather to point out that practical reality is much more mundane than picking apart unique court cases makes one think.
- andrewflnr 9mo ago
  It's not about "unique court cases". Surely you must have noticed that whenever someone asks online whether it's legal to do some apparently reasonable but tricky thing, the answer is almost always "ask a lawyer"? How many of those people can actually afford a lawyer? Do you actually think it's ok for freedom to only exist for people who can afford lawyers?
  - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
    The answer is "ask a lawyer", because giving legal advice on the Internet is opening yourself to significant legal risk. That's true even if you are a lawyer - hence the "I'm a lawyer but not your lawyer" disclaimer.
    - andrewflnr 9mo ago
      Fine. You're still missing the point in favor of a technicality. Why does it have to be this way?
RiverCrochet 9mo ago
One of the awesome things about the American Constitution is that it's not really written in complicated language. Of course this hasn't made things straightforward or easy.
gosub100 9mo ago
A corollary to your second paragraph is that you can concentrate power if you keep the masses from understanding it fully or able to practice it competently. This is why passing the bar exam is so difficult. What if most criminals were as adept at fighting their charges as they are at physically fighting? (Meaning: won a healthy percentage of the time). The system is designed to crush people and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.

sfdlkj3jk342a 9mo ago

In the end, we are at the mercy of those with power. Laws are just a way to make their decisions appear fair and appease the masses. If you piss off enough the wrong person with power, it doesn't matter what the laws say, you'll get screwed.

earthnail 9mo ago
Not quite that simple. Laws legitimise and stabilise those in power. If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. There are other means to gaining power, of course.
- AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
  > If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. I think this is why the thing judges hate the most is people admitting when the law gives them an unfair advantage. A rule that unjustly benefits someone is fine as long as they don't break kayfabe. Big Brother loves you, that's why you can't install apps on your phone, it's to protect you from harm. The incidental monopolization, censorship and surveillance are all totally unintentional and not really even happening. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Whereas, declare that you're shamelessly exploiting a loophole? Orange jumpsuit.
  - fc417fc802 9mo ago
    I agree, but that's the uncharitable interpretation. The charitable one is that intent matters. Those in power being threatened tends to strongly correlate with societal instability and a distinct lack of public safety. I may not always agree with the status quo but I don't want to live in Somalia either.
    - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
      "Intent matters" is the dodge. There is an action you can take that does two things. One, it makes it marginally more expensive to commit fraud. Two, it makes it significantly more expensive for your existing customers to patronize a competitor. If you do it, which of these things was it your intent to do? The answer doesn't change based on whether you announce it. You can fully intend to thwart competition without admitting it. And, of course, if the only way you get punished is if you admit it, what you really have is not a law against intending to do it but a law against saying it out loud. Which is poison, because then people knowingly do it without admitting it and you develop a culture where cheating is widespread and rewarded as long as the cheaters combine it with lying. Whereas if the law is concerned with knowledge but not "intent" then you'd have a law against thwarting competition and it only matters what anyone would expect to be the result rather than your self-proclaimed unverifiable purpose. But then it's harder to let powerful people get away with things by pretending they didn't intend the thing that everybody knew would be the result. Which is kind of the point.

robkop 9mo ago

Occam's Razor - this complexity arises from the human nature to try and build consistent abstractions over complex situations. It's exactly what we do in software too. To an outsider it's going to look nonsensical. I want to share a thought experiment with you - atop an ancient Roman legal case I recall from Gregory Aldrete - The Barbershop Murder. Suppose a man sends his slave to a barbershop to get a shave. The barbershop is adjacent to an athletic field where two men are throwing a ball back and forth. One throws the ball badly, the other fails to catch it, and the ball flies into the barbershop, hits the barber's hand mid-shave, and cuts the slave's throat-killing him. The legal question is posed: Who is liable under Roman law? - Athlete 1 who threw the ball badly - Athlete 2 who failed to catch it - The barber who actually cut the throat - The slave's owner for sending his slave to a barbershop next to a playing field - The Roman state for zoning a barbershop adjacent to an athletic field Q: What legal abstractions are required to apply consistent remedies to this case amongst others? Opinion: You'd need a theory of negligence. A definition of proximate cause. Standards for foreseeability. Rules about contributory fault. A framework for when the state bears regulatory responsibility. Each of those needs edge cases handled, and those edge cases need to be consistent with rulings in other domains. Now watch these edge cases compound, before long you've got something that looks absurdly complex. But it's actually just a hacky minimum viable solution to the problem space. That doesn't make it fair that citizens bear the burden of navigating it - but the alternative is inequal application of the law

ralferoo 9mo ago
> The legal question is posed: Who is liable under Roman law? My question is why does anybody have to be liable at all? Most normal people would consider this just to be a freak accident. Sure, there's learning points that can be taken from it to prevent similar incidents - e.g. erecting a fetch around the field (why didn't you suggest that the field owner be liable) as it can be reasonably foreseen the situation of a ball escaping and being a nuisance to someone else (maybe it just startles someone on the road, maybe it causes a car crash, whatever), or legislating bars or plastic film on the barber's window, etc. But here nobody seemed to act in any way negligently, nor was there any law or guidance that they failed to follow. It was just the result of lots of normal things happening that normally have no negative consequences and it's so unlikely to happen again that there's nothing useful to be gained by trying to put the blame on someone. It was just an accident.