Comment by LudwigNagasena
3 years ago
The words almost always mean almost exactly what they mean in plain English. That’s why the law is a huge mess.
As a fun exercises, try to find how many definitions of “child” there are in the US law and how many times it’s used undefined.
> As a fun exercises, try to find how many definitions of “child” there are in the US law and how many times it’s used undefined.
I don't see how a language is going to solve this. This isn't really an issue of language, it's an issue with ambiguity in the very intent itself. That's why we have judges, who interpret that intent.
Indeed. Ambiguity in legal codes is a feature that allows them to remain relevant for more than a couple of years, and the formal-law "utopia" that some commenters here appear to desire would be a nightmare if put into practice.
Personally I'd rather have laws that work, are consistent and easily understood if you can follow 'if A then B' logic, even if they have to be updated more often.
Relying on ambiguity is admitting there are no laws, and we rely on the common sense of the people in thr judicial system.
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Exactly, it is truly horrifying to think of a law encoded such that it can not be superseded by human interpretation.
They mean disputes go on for years, costing society a lot and enriching intermediaries.
This is a solved program in programming, you hover Child and hit "Go to definition". If it's ambiguous, the lawmakers would get a compile error instead of pushing a broken law. They may even have to pay us for consulting to fix it, depending on how esotrtic the language is, how nice is that!
Legal codes aren't meant to work like programming languages. It is impossible for a legislator to predict how the world will work when their law is applied, and it is highly unlikely that they will anticipate every situation and context in which their law will be invoked.
Judges and juries and lawyers all exist to help us interpret the inexact legal code in a way that is (hopefully usually; but obviously not always) fair and reasonable given the often-nuanced situations at hand.
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> As a fun exercises, try to find how many definitions of “child” there are in the US law and how many times it’s used undefined.
Which is why it is the common standard in German law to define every possibly unclear term either in the relevant section of the law itself or in an introduction article.
It's the standard in the US, too, but "child" is a case where plenty of lawmakers have assumed it couldn't possibly be misunderstood, while plenty of others have defined it with contradictory definitions in their respective sections.
The latter is better than the former, but it also makes it even harder to interpret sections with no definition.
I don't agree that the law is a huge mess. It is certainly far less of a mess than any code base I've ever seen, given the gigantic scope of what it applies to, and how many people if affects.
Note that the legal system is indeed a huge mess, but that happens because of many other reasons - not a problem with the wording or vagueness of the law, but with the explicit (malicious) intentions of law-makers, judges, police and others involved in the whole process.
For your example of "child": how often does it actually cause a problem in practice? How many people have been improperly punsihed/set free because of a poor interpretation of the word "child" in a specific law? This is far more relevant than every law taking up valuable space to define what such a common word means.
> How many people have been improperly punsihed/set free because of a poor interpretation of the word "child" in a specific law?
How many improperly punished people is good enough? How many cases go to Supreme Court because the amount of needless ambiguity just adds up, one word at a time?
> This is far more relevant than every law taking up valuable space to define what such a common word means.
Right? Why do many laws redefine it?
I don't know how many is good enough. If it's every other person, than that's bad; if it's two people since the law was written 50 years ago, I would say that's good enough in my book. Which is it?
And no, cases don't often make it to the Supreme Court because the wording of the law is ambiguous. They make it to the SC because the parties disagree on legal principles and on whether laws are unconstituional or not.
> Right? Why do many laws redefine it?
I would have to see some specific examples to judge for myself. Still, this seems to be the opposite problem compared to what was raised earlier. So which is it? Do we want laws to be more explicit about their exact definitions of words, or more implicit?
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How do you codify the effects of judicial review? What if the court's decision is not binding but is still persuasive -- such as when it's a decision from another jurisdiction?
Common law has like 800 years of tech debt. It's turtles all the way down. And by turtles I mean precedent, and not all of them are compatible.
None of what I've described is malicious. It's just what happens when law meets the messiness of the real world.
> ..and how many times it’s used undefined
This is the real advantage of codifying law into a programming language. You can have validation and assertion that is automated. And a strict structure, free from ambiguity.
As an additional advantage, multilingualism becomes more accessible, with the codified program/definition acting as the lingua franca of law. Thus, someone who only knows English could make sense of Japanese laws by reading it.
I cannot imagine some system that goes from a formal language to reality not having ambiguity. Even going from mathematical formalism to mathematical truth you can’t get all the truth. I imagine getting all the justice would be harder.
And I have heard lawyers explain that sometimes ambiguity, in contracts at least, is a good thing as it reduces the amount of a priori negotiation for low probability events. The the low probability event happens and the contract is ambiguous then you negotiate at that time and maybe sue.
And for laws, I think a bit of flex in the system probably would be a good thing. Give some scope for local judgment an autonomy to the people closest to the situation.
Why would you want every law that applies to children to explain what a child is? Why stop at child, perhaps each law should include a definition of every word it contains, right? That would certainly make every law much more readable for the masses.
The text of the law is meant to be understood by the people that it applies to, i.e. everyone living in the locality which passed said law. Expressing law in a formal language goes directly against that goal. Imagine if a EULA you get presented with, instead of being a wall of repetitive text, would be a wall of code with symbols you at best remember from some class you took in 8th grade.
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It isnt a bug it is a feature. There is a point in law sometimes being a bit vague to create flexibility
Being vague and up to interpretation because lawyers can’t foresee all possible circumstances is a feature.
Being a mess riddled with inconsistencies is not a feature.