Re:The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming
by AnthonyMouse on Friday April 20, 2018 @12:39PM
(#16886280)
> Shouldn't our laws, in general, be written to be as precise and narrowly defined as possible?
But they aren't that either.
There will always be more diversity in real life than on paper. You can't predict everything that will ever happen.
The real problem is structural.
We have a set of laws and if they're overly broad and prohibit lots of things they shouldn't, nobody really notices because prosecutorial discretion is a thing. As long as prosecutors mostly don't charge honest people with the overly broad laws, nobody gets up in arms to fix them even though everyone is in violation.
On the other hand, if someone does something unpopular and there is no law against it -- or there is a law against it but there isn't a law specifically against it and Something Must Be Done -- then we get a new overly broad law.
Laws get added but never removed, and each one prohibits more than it should. Over a hundred years of this and you get Three Felonies A Day, the only reason everyone isn't in prison is prosecutorial discretion, and lawyering is an exercise in figuring out which parts of which laws you actually have to follow to avoid being prosecuted without ever admitting that that's what's happening.
But they aren't that either.
There will always be more diversity in real life than on paper. You can't predict everything that will ever happen.
The real problem is structural.
We have a set of laws and if they're overly broad and prohibit lots of things they shouldn't, nobody really notices because prosecutorial discretion is a thing. As long as prosecutors mostly don't charge honest people with the overly broad laws, nobody gets up in arms to fix them even though everyone is in violation.
On the other hand, if someone does something unpopular and there is no law against it -- or there is a law against it but there isn't a law specifically against it and Something Must Be Done -- then we get a new overly broad law.
Laws get added but never removed, and each one prohibits more than it should. Over a hundred years of this and you get Three Felonies A Day, the only reason everyone isn't in prison is prosecutorial discretion, and lawyering is an exercise in figuring out which parts of which laws you actually have to follow to avoid being prosecuted without ever admitting that that's what's happening.