One wonders why we have not developed something explicit like mathematical notations for legal stuff.
I mean, comma/and/or separated lists in full text? Not even parenthesis? That’s not precision.
Because you have to apply the law to fact and facts lack mathematical precision.
"No vehicles in the park" would require someone to categorize everything in the world into vehicle or !vehicle. Does a wheel chair count?
It's easier to lay out the principle and let judges determine edge cases as they play out.
The way to think about it is like a logical evaluation shortcut:
if not ADA_EXEMPT and IS_VEHICLE:
DISALLOW_IN_PARK
Using the IT analogy, it's less like C++, where each statement must pass compiler checks for the application to merely start, but more like a Python, where some illegal stuff may peacefully exist as long as it's never invoked.
EDIT: grammar
And even if IS_VEHICLE was formally defined, that doesn't help, because the concept isn't reusable. It's perfectly normal for "No vehicles allowed in park" and "No vehicles allowed in playground" to have different definitions of what counts as a vehicle, based on what would seem reasonable to a jury
"On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship; this has since been dubbed Gödel's Loophole. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. The judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gödel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gödel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gödel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del#Princeton,_Ein...
That's how common law and precedents work in the US system. Case A from 1924 said cars were vehicles, but bikes weren't. Case B from 1965 said e-bikes weren't vehicles. Case C said motorcycles were vehicles. And then the judge analogizes the facts and find that an electric motorcycle is a vehicle so long as its not a e-bike.
But the administrative law side of things works the opposite. They publish a regulation just saying "e-bikes above a certain weight qualify as vehicles under Law X."
For example Indiana recently changed their Turn signal law from "Must put in on 300 feet before a lane change" to "Must signal in a reasonable time"
WTF is a reasonable time... well what ever time the cop, judge, or prosecutors says it is
The programmer in me fumes at that imprecision.
The human in me says "thank God". Because there a myriad valid times you cannot turn on signal 300ft before lane change, but you should always do it in reasonable time :)
If I turn on a new street and there's a car parked 200ft down the lane or if a kid jumps on the road or if I become aware of an obstacle or a car cuts me off or I want to give somebody room at a merge etc etc... I may not be able to do it in 300ft but I should still try to do it in reasonable time.
There's no "winning". Overly precise is inhumane in some scenarios, Overly vague is inhumane in others.
Such as “must signal within a reasonable time (signaling at least 300ft beforehand while not speeding is to be considered a sufficient condition for signaling within a reasonable time)”
Downside: that could make laws even longer.
Hm, what if laws had, like, in a separate document, a list of a number of examples of scenarios along with how the law is to be interpreted in those scenarios? Though I guess that’s maybe kind of the sort of thing that precedent is for?
I thought precedent was a broader term that also covers accepted practices or processes.
You're more charitable than me: I assume there will be infinitely more times where the imprecision is used for probable cause for a stop, than there will be times where someone was going to pull you over because you properly responded to a road hazard
But I think there's a difference between "intent of change" and "abuse of change" / "threat surface of the change". Sometimes there's a clear, direct line between the two, but (and this is me being charitable:) I think a lot of the time there isn't. Which is to say, I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction that a) The law was changed to make things better/easier for people while b) In actual real world it can or will be abused a lot to make arbitrary trouble - the latter will depend a lot on place/politics/corruption/culture/societal norms/power balance/etc.
E.g. as someone else said in this threat, there is useful ambiguity in requirements like: „within reasonable time“. But if you are enumerating a bunch of things and their relationships, ambiguity is often not what you want, but what you get without some clear syntax.
In my experience it’s not uncommon to stumble upon legal texts like „a, b and c or d then …“. But what does that mean? Is this supposed to be „(a && b && c) || d“ or „(a && b) && (c || d)“? That’s stuff that could easily be clarified at times of writing by just using parenthesis. Or maybe using actual lists with one item per line instead of stupid csv embedded in your sentences.
The difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance might be the smallest proveable piece of evidence. A word, an email, an assumption, an ommission etc.
This seems like evidence that I'm right, not that I'm wrong. The tiniest facts matter, and an AI that is prone to making up facts wholesale would totally screw up a case.
https://www.wordrake.com/blog/3-must-know-comma-rules-for-la....
https://thewritelife.com/is-the-oxford-comma-necessary/#The_...
1. Laws are written or at least voted on by representatives, and they don't vote for things that they don't think they understand. Also, they're pretty regularly swapped out and often totally bonkers. Especially at the state level.
2. Things change. Look at how the right of search and seizure is applied to digital data and metadata.
3. Most importantly, the imprecision is intentional. "Beyond all reasonable doubt" has no definition because it is up to the person rendering judgement. The courts decide the bounds of the law, and within those bounds people decide how to apply them.
They don’t even read the things they vote on. They’re huge and it’d be a full time job.
(It makes sense from the press perspective, as the substance is changing constantly in big bills right up until it passes… that’s what the fight is all about.)
Oh you sweet summer child.
Many legal documents are purposely not pinning themselves down on specifics, because they don't want an agreement circumvented on technicalities, when it should be pretty clear to reasonable people what is intended in an agreement.