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Comment by contravariant | Hacker News Reader

You're asking a court to do something different than apply existing laws to a possibly new situation. That seems like a weird ask.

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IANAL but isn't this the crux of the debate regarding strict construction?

I agree the apply-by-analogy approach makes sense of laws cannot be revised. But my understanding is that most legislatures are permitted to revise or repeal laws to adapt to new circumstances.

I'm not aware of any law that cannot be revised. Can you name such a country / law?

Some constitutions contain parts that can't be changed. The most famous example is probably Germany's basic law (technically not a constitution) where article 79(3) prevents changes to articles 1 or 20 of the basic law [1]. Wikipedia lists some other examples [2]. I'm not aware of anyone setting labor law in stone though, that would seem foolish.

1: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrenched_clause

Probably not the kind of law you were thinking of, but articles 1 (protecting human dignity) and 20 (enshrining the principles of democracy and rule of law) of the German constitution can not be changed or repealed.

Revising and repealing laws is a slow process that take up a lot of legislative resources. Allowing the courts to work in parallel in this way speeds up everything. If the legislature is unhappy with the decisions the court comes to, then they can go in and make changes. If they agree then they don't have to do anything and can focus on other things.

Well even if laws can be revised the courts aren't really in a position to do so.

At least, if the separation of powers is still intact.

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