Comment by jrm4
3 years ago
Lawyer here.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. I teach legal research and I do some open discussions in the beginning and (no judgment of course) someone ALWAYS brings up "if they wrote the laws clearer..."
nope. nope nope nope. This is not how it works.
You seriously don't think some clarity could have helped? Like, if the law explicitly said strollers are okay and that bicycles are [not] okay, you think the quiz wouldn't have more consistent answers?
Or maybe the rule was only supposed to be for things with motors/engines and after clarifying instantly 2/3 of the questions are an easy objective "allowed".
You can't fix subjectivity, but you can reduce it, and this quiz is based on super low hanging fruit.
> if the law explicitly said strollers are okay and that bicycles are [not] okay
The quizz would have asked questions about the new edge-cases (created by the additional examples).
And those new edge cases would be much less important and more obscure.
The people just trying to follow the law would have a much easier time.
Oh, in this case, sure -- but I think it's a great teaching tool in getting people to understand the difficulty in other cases, and perhaps more importantly, understanding that these things are not solvable and that the essence of the very purpose of law is to have a method to get through these "not fully solvable" things.
I'm not sure what your point is. The laws can't be written clearer? Even if they were, you'd still get stuff that's ambiguous? As a lawyer you don't write the law so you have to go with what's written? You like interpreting vaguely written rules?
It's just how language works. Language is inherently ambiguous in the strictest sense. It's why at times you need to use more and more words to convey a clear message to someone, but in some sense, it's a never ending rabbit hole. Most of the time though, you don't need to be super precise in order to get a general message across to someone. Just something good enough.
It's why, as some other people noted, you sometimes can't tell anyone anything: http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-an...
That's a great read, thanks for linking it. The twist at the end is kind of funny because it makes you think, "do I really get it"?
I guess sometimes words just aren't enough, you need actual experience. Which I guess if we're taking legal stuff, that's where case law comes in, right?
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Not that it's impossible to improve things, but people (frequently techies) believe the problem to be solvable and relatedly think it's easier than it actually is.