>It’s illegal to sleep in an office. That legislation, like many others, was put in place to protect renters and workers

how did it protect workers/renters?

It eliminated a common form of worker abuse.

It didn’t.

That’s just what it was “created for”.

In other words, that was the rhetoric the council used to clear their conscience while helping their developer friends fill vacancies. It makes sense if you don’t think about it.

Huh, somebody should tell the Silicon Valley tech firms that. Dirty lawbreakers with their nap pods!

Where is it illegal to sleep at the office?

In this place, is living in you car (and showering at the gym) also illegal?

why can't we write laws that are conditional, where we explain the intent of the law, and then the law can be ignored when the conditions aren't met

I mean that's kind of what a law is. It stipulates things for a restricted set of circumstances. Should laws be continually refined to better define the circumstances? Of course. But if you rule by loophole you have created a sieve of a boat for a social structure.

oh, well, i wouldn't want that. so maybe not ignore the law, but what about just writing in the intent anyway, wouldn't that help with leniency?

Laws are supposed to be written in such a way as to communicate their intent. It's already there, it's just in terse, technical language. The problem with spelling out intent is it creates a huge attack surface to get a law thrown out or circumvented. It is sort of like trying to program using natural language. People understand better but it functions worse.

The way we fight this in programming is comments and documentation. Perhaps we need something similar for laws? I see the Federalist Papers mentioned quite often in constitutional law; are there other bodies of debate and paper that provide similar justification around other laws? There might also be room for "non-binding" clauses when writing the law.

Depending on the governing body, there is a process of comment and redaction before a law is adopted which is recorded and can be used to make a case. It serves such a purpose.

Without judging the merits of this particular law, it's because conditions will be abused by the people who have the strongest incentive to game them.

Laws are like code in this way: simplicity is not always easy, or possible, given the constraints, but complexity has significant downsides.

i mean if you say so. the supreme court does it, and it's not like they're some special breed of superhumans or something.

You are mixing two concepts here, perhaps unintentionally. The supreme court has a standards document against which it evaluates the laws (the constitution, whether it is state (SCOC) or country (SCOTUS)). I have not read a decision where they evaluate "what the legislature 'meant'" when they make their rulings, although they do sometimes comment on that.

The Supreme Court absolutely interprets the meaning of federal law passed by the legislature. Whether they do it by appeal to authorial intent or something else is a matter of jurisprudential philosophy.

For an example of talking about what the legislators intended, see King v. Burwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_v._Burwell

Our two main political parties constantly fight to appoint their preferred candidate to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court were just following some apolitical procedure of interpretation, none of that would be necessary.

"some apolitical procedure of interpretation"

I'm down. But who gets to decide what's an apolitical procedure of interpretation? And what does that even look like?

The jury system might have had this power in the past, before plea deals et cetera

Even then, wouldn't it have been more about case law defining what could be be feasibly prosecuted rather than refining what the law actually says?

If so, it's better, nut still not ideal. It results in information asymmetry for those that don't have a law degree or experience with the system, or can't afford to hire someone who can. That is, law enforcement can use the letter of the law to take actions that aren't enforceable if challenged, but it still requires a challenge be mounted.