Comment by nvm0n2
3 years ago
But that doesn't mean freedom or flexibility for citizens. It means freedom and flexibility for the judiciary. For citizens, it takes away their freedom and flexibility because vague or contradictory laws (often coupled with severe penalties) create risk, or the perception of risk, where there wasn't meant to be any to begin with. It causes people to stop trying new things out of fear that Rule By Law will happen to them.
Whose freedom is more important? The people's, or their rulers? If you believe in enlightened rulers, you may legitimately conclude the latter, but for the rest of us, we'd rather the government be properly constrained. After all that's why laws are written down to begin with, it's why there is such a thing as the professional lawmaker.
Vague law is usually not written due to some deep philosophy of law making, after all. Nobody really tries to defend it in practice. It's almost always a result of lazy or politically contentious lawmaking when the people writing the laws don't really know what they want in the first place, so trying to divine their intent will never get you far.
"But that doesn't mean freedom or flexibility for citizens. "
It does, because if laws want to cover every case, they need to be so verbatim and rule out so many possibilities, that in the end, every action is encoded in law, which will result in people only doing things that are explicitely allowed. That limits a lot.
Simple example, despite being an adult, I like to climb trees. And sometimes also in parks. So I had discussions with officials or or wannabe officials about: is this allowed? It turns out, there is no rule allowing it. But there is also usually no rule forbidding it. But most people default to, if it is not explicitely allowed, it must be forbidden (which is a very german thing, but is not unique to us).
Michael de Montagne, a old french philosopher who is also quoted around this thread, put it way better in words. I try to find the passage.