Comment by delichon
5 hours ago
> As an example, the court explained that whether the Super Bowl happens is an “occurrence,” but who wins it is not.
This level of parsing looks like judicial legislation to me. Isn't it one occurrence if the Rams win and another if the Packers win? Better that they declare the law void for vagueness and give the legislature another shot at it. Guessing what the words mean, when it is not at all clear to professionals let alone to the average citizen does not give proper notification of what the law is to the people subject to it.
Everyone agreed that this (what the court ruled) was the plain meaning of the law up until Kalshi just decided to go for it. They basically did an Uber on the law, completely ignoring how it had long been interpreted and demanding someone stop them. And only once Kalshi wanted to make money on sports gambling did there start to be parsing like this, to try to argue that sports gambling was legal on a CFTC-regulated exchange. If Kalshi had gotten the law thrown out for vagueness then basically there was a road map for making any law that got in the way of a company making money thrown out for vagueness.
The key is that up until a few years ago basically the universal consensus was that sports gambling was not possible on a CFTC regulated exchange, then all of a sudden Kalshi did it and now they are trying to pay enough lawyers to get them to justify it. This ruling is not judicial legislation, this is demanding that companies actually follow the law.
Declaring the law void for vagueness would not favor Kalshi. It would undercut the federal preemption that Kalshi is advocating for.
Since when has vagueness been considered a bad thing for statutes? It's the foundation of the US (and anglo) legal system and why courts exist, to fill in. And vague statutes that can be interpreted by courts has long been preferred to precise legislated meaning that you seem to prefer.
You could live in Germany or France if you prefer a legal system more ruled by clear statute?
2 replies →
I love it when programmers try to play lawyer. Law is not code.
From the opinion:
"Because the definitions of event and occurrence do not resolve the issue before us, we must also consider the statutory context"
They talk about this and the exact definitions for basically the entire opinion. It's not just "meh, I felt like it". They are dealing with how these words have been defined in prior statutes.