Comment by tsimionescu
3 years ago
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?
> 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.
I'm not from your legal system, and yet even I know that's not right: they make it the SC because the 'losing' party disagrees with a lower judge's decision that's already been made, and makes an argument compelling enough in appealing it that it needs to be reconsidered. (A few times, to get as far as the SC, probably.) That almost has to be because of some 'ambiguity' - the lower judge decided one way and the appeal is 'well no I don't think that's the correct reading'.
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> 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.
I don’t see how those are exclusionary principles. Also, I have never heard about this case, but after some simple googling I learned that the Supreme Court indeed had to figure out the definition for children in a particular law: https://berkeleysolicitors.ie/supreme-court-determines-defin...
> Still, this seems to be the opposite problem compared to what was raised earlier.
No, it is the same problem I mentioned before: some laws define it in a contradictory way; some laws don’t define it. I told you it’s a fun exercise!
> Do we want laws to be more explicit about their exact definitions of words, or more implicit?
I want laws to make sense. Inconsistency doesn’t make sense and only brings troubles. Vagueness is good. Ambiguity is bad.
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.
Having EULAs and many types of contract be code would be a huge upgrade.
For one, it'd make them a lot shorter. You could use inheritance or composition to refactor out repetitive boilerplate, which is 90% of what EULAs are. The thing you see would only be the places where it deviates from a base EULA that you could study once.
For another, it would catch bugs automatically. I have caught bugs in contracts drafted by lawyers a bunch of times, just by reading them carefully. For example numbers that are stated in both words and digits but they don't match. References to clauses that no longer exist. Statements that are contradictory.
A properly written language could be compiled to English for people who for some reason can't read the "real" language. But a well written PL for law would be quite readable.
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