20% per year is not outrageously high. If a business makes 20% profit per year, it would be doing fairly well, but not spectacularly. The problem is with GUARANTEEING that rate of return to others. That's when it becomes fraud. But simply stating that you're making that much, especially when it's true, is perfectly legitimate.
You can't make laws as clear as technical documents. That's a quixotic notion held by those who fail to appreciate that other people see things vastly different from how they do. The difference between an RFC and a law is that you can reasonably expect people to follow the RFC because it is in their own best interest to do so. A law, on the other hand, will always have an exception, a border case, or some other mitigating circumstance that will require interpretation. That is the job of the courts and lawyers.
Even accepting your statement about what is or isn't the problem with the legal system, it is the way it is and that's not going to change in the near future. Is your proposed solution simply not to solve the problem?
And of course the skill of the lawyers matters. It has always mattered. That's why we don't let just anybody be a lawyer. In case you didn't realize, being an effective lawyer requires a great deal of skill. The ability to analyze a case, compare points of law between present and past cases, and present a compelling argument are all talents that are learned. As much as you would like to believe that the facts are always completely self evident and are the only thing that should matter, that's just not the case. If it were, everybody would have exactly the same political opinion about everything. Or would you say that our political system so perverted that leadership skill actually matters?
According to the article, they only invest in cases that are pretty much a surefire win for the plaintiff. This makes sense, because if they're in it to make money, then cases that are likely to be questionable are a bad investment.
Seems to me that they're actually doing a public service, by allowing little guys who can't afford to take on big corporations who have clearly done them wrong to proceed with a potentially expensive lawsuit. No longer can the party with deeper pockets simply fight a war of attrition and hope to run the other guy dry. If the plaintiff ends up winning he gets more than he would have gotten had he simply given up, and if somebody else makes a buck off it as well, then so much the better.
Too bad it's the Dingoo A320 and not the Airbus A320, which would have been considerably more impressive, if somewhat less practical. I'm not sure I would want to see what happens in the event of kernel panic, though.
What is that picture supposed to be in the article? "What New Zealand might look like?"
And why is Idle's formatting still so broken? I'm on Firefox 3 on a Mac, and the titles are invisible and the text box I'm typing in now is only about 20 characters wide.
From trier of fact:
In Anglo-American based legal systems, finding of fact made by the jury are not appealable unless clearly wrong to any reasonable person. This principle is enshrined in the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that "...no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
So, no, findings of a jury can't generally be appealed. This is not just me saying this. This is in the Constitution. You are very confused about the nature of the legal system. You're conflating findings of fact with findings of law. They are two completely separate things.
That is, the jury never deliberates on anything and therefore the judge has not counteracted the jury at all.
Why do you think it's called a "directed verdict"? Because traditionally, the judge directed the jury to come up with that verdict. It's really just a matter of formal procedure that the judgment is entered before the defense has presented its case, in much the same way that the bottom of the 9th inning of a baseball game isn't played when the home team is winning. And if you'd poked around a bit more, you might have discovered the concept of a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which is EXACTLY what I was talking about. The jury decides one thing, and the judge changes it to something else. So your belief that the decision of the jury is "sacrosanct" is flat out wrong. But if there is going to be such a change, it must be done by the trial judge. Once the verdict is entered, it cannot be appealed. Only rulings of law can be appealed. While an appeal may grant a new trial, and hence a new chance for the facts to be tried, the findings of fact themselves are not appealed. Get that through your head. It's important. That's why it's in the Constitution.
Fine, if you want to be extremely pedantic, you are right. Juries cannot simply stand up and say "this law is unconstitutional" and have it be so.
This is not pedantic. This is a fundamental principle of our legal system and you would do well to understand it. The practice of jury nullification is enshrined in no legal document. It has no legal weight in and of itself. That juries can use their position of power to push for social change is not a new concept. But there's nothing particularly special about juries refusing to convict as the legal system is concerned. They are free to decide whatever they like for whatever reason they like. That is why we have juries. But their influence is limited to one specific application of the law, rather than the nature of the law itself. That is a power reserved specifically for judges. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. It is one of the key principles on which our legal system is based.
You said, and I quote: "It should NEVER be up to the jury to make determinations of what the law is." The word "should" implies subjectivity and I responded in kind that I believe the opposite to be true, that the jury should make determinations about the law.
Fine, we're going to play the semantics game. I meant to say that in practice, the job of deciding questions of law is not expected to be delegated to the jury. Not whether the jury ought to be doing it or not.
And you don't know what you're talking about with regards to appeals. Findings of law, as decided by the judge, can be appealed. Findings of fact, as determined by the jury (or the judge in a bench trial) cannot, except in very unusual circumstances.
The judge can't say "you're wrong" and send the jury back until the come up with the right answer.
Actually, a directed verdict is the process of doing just that. The only reason a judge cannot enter a guilty plea after a finding of not guilty is because it violates double jeopardy. Doing it the other way is fine, though.
The main point is that the jury is entrusted to find the facts in the case. That they can disagree with the law and use that as an excuse to find the facts to be other than what they actually are is merely a quirk of the legal system, no matter how important some might find that quirk to be. The jury never decides matters of law. Claiming that they do through jury nullification shows a lack of understanding about the legal system. That is why it is not relevant to this discussion. While it may seem like the jury is deciding matters of law, they are, as far as the legal process is concerned, still only finders of fact. They are free to find the facts any way they please, within reason. But jury nullification does not invalidate the law. A ruling from a court does. That is the big difference.
Thats because you subscribe to the idea that intentional misinterpretation and misunderstanding rises to the level of legitimate public debate.
It's ALL open to interpretation. That's my point. And you just proved it with your long rambling diatribe about what the Second Amendment means. If there were really no debate, it would be unnecessary for you to argue so vehemently for one interpretation over another. I only picked the Second Amendment because the debate over the meaning is so well known. It does exist, regardless of how you or I or anyone else feels about the merits of such debate.
Let me ask you something. Does the right to keep and bear arms cover, say, bazookas? High explosives? Nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? Again, I don't really care what you think the answer is as much as the fact that you acknowledge that there is some reasonable question over what exactly it covers. And this is my point. No matter how crystal clear you attempt to make some law, and how much you plan for it to cover every possible case, somebody will find an exception. And it is the job of the courts to deal with those exceptions, regardless of whether they are truly "legitimate" or not.
Simply put, you're wrong.
I am aware of the concept of jury nullification, and I am not addressing that here because it is a controversial issue and one that is worthy of a discussion in its own right. It also has no bearing on this discussion. Even when the jury refuses to convict based on an unjust law, they are not finding issue with the law itself, but only its application given the current set of facts. They are effectively finding that, while the facts may fit the strict definition of the law, there are mitigating circumstances that do not allow them to find the defendant guilty for whatever reason. The jury does not, and cannot, rule on points of law. They are only allowed to rule on facts. That is why decisions of a jury, unlike decisions of a judge, are generally not allowed to be appealed. They are also not legally binding on any other case, unlike the decisions of a judge.
Never in my life have I seen somebody so spectacularly fail to get the point.
Many people disagree with your interpretation. It is a well known point of contention in the U.S. Constitution. I could have just as easily used the Interstate Commerce Clause, but I chose the Second Amendment because the public debate is more widely recognized. The merits of such a debate are completely irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.
Thank you nonetheless for that fascinating essay.
Translation: the High Priest In Charge pulls out of his exalted ass arbitrary "interpretations" to his liking (which the poor sheep in the jury box are "unqualified" to judge - for "their own good") and instructs the dumbfounded sheeple to do as he exactly as he tells them, thus restricting any and all options they ever thought they had.
Ah, now we come to the crux of your argument. You are smarter than all of the rest of us "sheeple", so you should be put in charge of deciding what is and isn't a good law. And your nonsensical metaphors and fanciful characterizations, while colorful, fail to convey anything more than your own intellectual snobbishness.
The jury instructions you cited, while somewhat lengthy, do not seem overly complicated--particularly when you are familiar with the facts of the case and can also ask the judge for clarification of any parts you do not understand. They certainly do not seem impenetrable by a person of average intelligence. It is somewhat ironic, given your perception of yourself as much smarter than the "sheeple" who are the intended recipients of those instructions, that you find them daunting. The fact that you can't comprehend simple concepts when more than a couple of them are strung together does not render the entire system defective.
Which commandments Christianity solidified (and which then Islam made harsher) and which are indirectly responsible for Christians outnumbering Jews by a factor of a 1000 to 1 or so (Islam having an even higher ratio). You should ponder this relationship.
Even granting your dubious premise that Christianity created simpler rather than less complex laws, this is an unsupported argument post hoc, ergo propter hoc and does not merit further response.
Simply to remove the possibility of conflict of interest. It is the desire of investigators to discover crime and that makes some of them to lose objectivity. That is why courts (or some similar mechanism) are still a good idea, irrespective of how clear the law gets. If the law said that you cannot have more than 2 apples on your person, no exceptions, and you were accused of having 3, the accuser (or an arresting officer or some other functionary) would have to prove to your peers (i.e. a jury) that you indeed had them 3 apples. Otherwise a mere accusation, backed up by a friendly co-worker would be enough. Note that this does not change at all if you were to be accused of having 3 apples in a 2-apple country or of committing mass murder with weapons of mass destruction.
And how do you define having apples? Do you have to physically hold the apples? Do they just have to be within your physical control? How do you define that? Is it enough if they are in your house, whether you're there or not? What about if you're only renting and your landlord put them in a locked closet without your knowledge? Does it matter if you have a mortgage or not? What happens if you have two apples, and somebody throws a third apple at you? Or you don't know that you have three apples, because somebody sneaked one into your pocket while you weren't looking? Maybe you're blind and somebody told you that what you were picking up was an orange. You can come up with an infinite number of variations on these circumstances, each of which must be tested on a case by case basis to arrive at a fair result. Nobody will be able to predict in advance how a court should rule in every conceivable circumstance.
If it does, it was a wrong law to have to begin with. Otherwise it just becomes better, not more complex. Example: "You may have no more then 2 apples on your person at any time" can be confused by someone coming up with an apple-orange hybrid, or introducing sliced apples etc. Depending upon the intent of the law, in can be re-formulated as "You may have no more then 2 plant-matter objects on your person" or "you may have no more than 100g of plant matter on your person" etc. Not that the law does not get more complex, nor longer. It just becomes different, and either more or less clear and easier or harder to test against.
Never mind the fact that your solution calls for vastly expanding the law beyond its original intent simply for the purpose of clarity, which is a frightening enough proposition if you truly are in favor of that. No matter how specific or general you make the law, there is no law that has no exceptions. And if there are exceptions, you cannot know in advance what those exceptions will be.
Not it is not logically inconsistent. This same problem exists in science, where the incomplete, wrong and ill-thought out systems are usually more complex then the accurate ones covering all cases. Example: before Copernicus the leading explanation for movement of celestial objects was a convoluted circles-within-circles scheme which attempted (poorly) to account for all observable evidence. The present model of Solar system, which covers all evidence (which previously was a long list of "exceptions" and "what if" scenarios) in one swoop, with a much more elegant and conceptually simple.
This just proves my point. Do you not see the difference between scientific principles and the laws of society? Let me spell it out for you. Scientific principles are descriptive. They can be tested for conformity to reality, and rejected if they no longer adequately describe it. A society's laws are prescriptive. They cannot be tested in advance. They can be rejected or modified on the basis of what society decides collectively is acceptible. We cannot collectively decide that gravity doesn't exist. Scientific principles and laws couldn't be more opposite in this regard.
And I point you to the decades upon decades of efforts by scientists to come up with systems of describing and developing of just such laws. Apparently they are all on a "fools errand", despite some "marginal" successes like putting the man on the Moon and getting this whole Internet thing going. A really lucky bunch of fools apparently.
It seems to me that, inasmuch as these results have anything to do with the law, they are a result of the law as developed by society. You know--the law that you are so passionately opposed to?
Why, then a chain saw massacre guy, who lives his life by skillfully applying his bloodied device to anyone he encounters, is fully within the "law", since this is how he "lives his life", no?
This is silliness and you know it. When I say the law reflects how we live our lives, I mean that the law, as it has been codified, is a reflection of how society chooses to comport itself and what is considered acceptable in society. It is not, as you suggest, a grand game of Nomic whereby the goal is to defeat other players by passing laws that render their innocent actions illegal without adequate warning.
... which "guide for settling disputes" then obligates them to do certain things to avoid the said disputes, which is in effect a code by which
You are confusing cause and effect. The law did not come about out of a desire to control the actions of others. Rather, it came about because certain actions cause harm to others, and in a civil society there must be a way of dealing with those who violate the rights of others. And this method must balance uniformity in applications with fairness and reasonableness. You propose to eliminate the latter qualities in pursuit of the former. And yet, like chasing the horizon, you will never reach a goal that is constantly receding from you.
Yea, in the same way as stating "2+2=4" "traps" all the proponents of the number "7" on the "wrong side" of arithmetics!
Again, you fail to understand the difference between descriptive principles and prescriptive laws. Passing a law declaring 2+2=7 doesn't make it so. Passing a law declaring murder to be unacceptable does. That's the difference, and that's why you need to rethink your position.
Err, no. Juries must decide if a law was broken or not. To do so they must not only find facts, but also compare them to the template of the law, which is where the process falls apart as the laws are so fucked up that juries have next to an impossible task of figuring out if the "law" was broken or not.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! You couldn't be more wrong about this, and it shows you have a fundamental lack of understanding about how the legal system works. Your aversion to it is not surprising, as people have a tendency to deride things they cannot or will not understand.
The process works like this. The two sides present the case in front of the jury. The judge and jury hear the case. The JUDGE makes determinations of law, and for the purposes of the case, that is the law as far as the jury is concerned. When the parties are finished, the judge explains to the jury the possible verdicts they can come back with in simple, straightforward terms much like you are proposing. This is why jury instructions are so critical, and why quite a few appeals turn on whether juries are given proper instructions or not.
A typical instruction will be go basically like this: "If you find that the defendant killed the victim with his car intentionally and with malice, then you must return a verdict of guilty of homicide. If you find that the defendant killed the victim with his car because he was not paying adequate attention to the road, you must return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. And if you find that the defendant was paying sufficient attention and this was simply an unavoidable accident, you must return a verdict of not guilty." It should NEVER be up to the jury to make determinations of what the law is; only whether the set of facts conform to that law, as it is explained by the judge. If they have questions, they are obligated to ask the judge for clarification rather than attempting to make that determination on their own. In truth, it's about as close to your proposed system as one could hope for. If that is unsuitable to you, then you are contradicting yourself.
You should ponder upon why Judeo-Christian religions (of which Islam is an off-shoot) are so vastly popular. And if you do, you will find that it is an average person's deep-seated desire for a concise, clear set of rules to govern society that is at the very heart of it. Mock that desire it at your own peril.
I disagree. They are popular for the same reason all religion is popular--they give meaning to the meaningless. It has nothing to do with wanting a set of laws that cover every situation. In point of fact, Jewish tradition does not prescribe a set of laws that must be meticulously followed. Rather, there are a few such laws--the commandments--and a set of guidelines for moral behavior. Much of Jewish Talmudic tradition, for example, focuses on interpreting, challenging, and clarifying laws set out in the Torah. And even the experts in the Talmud will be the first to admit that it is impossible for them to conceive of every possible situation in advance.
You always need an arbitration process to prevent abuse.
Why? What is the job of the courts, if not to interpret the law? Under your proposal, there would be no need for judges, because laws would be clear and concise in every set of circumstances. The possibility of one particular enforcement agent misapplying (not "abusing", because under what you propose no such abuse would be possible) the law could be resolved by a simple appeals process whereby the direct supervisor of, say, the police officer makes a determination whether the law was appropriately enforced. Under your system, that would be all that the courts do anyway, because it would not be up to them to determine if the law is fair or not--only whether it applies in this circumstance. Anybody could do that, right?
And that is different from, say, the US constitution, how exactly?
Tell me the precise settled meaning of the Second Amendment, for example, and you will have answered your own question. The Constitution is a guideline establishing how the government should be run and what rights and responsibilities are held by the federal government, the states, and the people. It is not a precise code of laws that is not open to interpretation.
Bullshit. Well designed laws, even though they can be changed, require less and less modifications as more refined they become. Bullshit, byzantine, intellectual diarrhoea "laws" are in a state of constant chaotic flux and become more and more confused and voluminous as the time passes, because confusion and chaos are their very purpose.
Your argument falls apart when you realize that, no matter how carefully crafted and precise you think your laws are, somebody will always find an exception, a "but what if", a border case, or some other situation that is not directly covered by the law. In order to cover this particular case, the law would need to be modified to add an exception, or you risk the ambiguity of not knowing how that same situation should be resolved the next time it comes up. The law therefore becomes more and more complex with time. You simply can't make a law cover more situations adequately by making it simpler, because the simpler you make the law the more likely you are to find exceptions to it.
Again, bullshit. Religions do that because they have no mechanism to correct their "commandments". Human laws do. But that does not mean that a correction must always be uniformly in the direction of more complexity. In fact the whole art of law-making is to go in the precisely the opposite direction, to formulate simple laws in such a way as to cover all cases.
Again, this is logically inconsistent. Simpler means more general, and it's the specifics that are always the thorny issue in a legal system.
This has nothing to do with "subtlety" and "nuance". It has to do with byzantine, arcane, sets of incomprehensible to an average citizen rules, purposefully formulated so in a special religious language so that he or she has no chance ever being able to deal with them without assistance of a special priest.
The true "subtlety" and "nuance" are part of law making, whereby the law has to be formulated in such a clever way as to maintain total clarity and to prevent the need for any arcane "interpretations" at the time of its application.
I challenge you to design a law that can be applied fairly with no exceptions that require interpretation. It is a fool's errand.
The fact is that your fundamental premise is flawed. For the most part, the laws in our society are simply a reflection of how we live our lives. Rather than being a code by which everyone is obligated to live, they are more of a guide to settling disputes between people, entities such as corporations or the government, or both. In general, you will find that the goal of the law is to reach as fair a conclusion as possible for all parties involved. By contrast, your proposed system would seem to be designed to simply trap one side or the other within the language of the law, rather than focusing on the net effect of its application.
Dynamically binding, you realize the magic. Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.
