> you have so profoundly misinterpreted my comment that I call into question whether you actually read it or not.
You are expressing a position which is both common and disingenuous.
> Too many technical people think of the law as executable code and if you can find a gap in it, then you can get away with things on a technicality. That's not how the law works (spirit vs letter).
The government passes a law that applies a different rule to cars than trucks and then someone has to decide if the Chevrolet El Camino is a car or a truck. The inevitability of these distinctions is a weak excuse for being unable to answer basic questions about what you're proposing. The law is going to classify the vehicle as one thing or the other and if someone asks you the question you should be able to answer it just as a judge would be expected to answer it.
Which is a necessary incident to evaluating what a law does. If it's a car and vehicles classified as trucks have to pay a higher registration fee because they do more damage to the road, you have a way to skirt the intent of the law. If it's a truck and vehicles classified as trucks have to meet a more lax emissions standard, or having a medium-sized vehicle classified as a truck allows a manufacturer to sell more large trucks while keeping their average fuel economy below the regulatory threshold, you have a way to skirt the intent of the law.
Obviously this matters if you're trying to evaluate whether the law will be effective -- if there is an obvious means to skirt the intent of the law, it won't be. And so saying that the judge will figure it out is a fraud, because in actual fact the judge will have to do one thing or the other and what the judge does will determine whether the law is effective for a given purpose.
You can have all the "reasonable person" standards you want, but if you cannot answer what a "reasonable person" would do in a specific scenario under the law you propose, you are presumed to be punting because you know there is no "reasonable" answer.
Toll roads charge vehicles based upon the number of axles they have.
In other words, you made my point for me. The law is much better than you at doing this, they've literally been doing it for hundreds of years. It's not the impossible task you imagine it to be.
> You can have all the "reasonable person" standards you want, but if you cannot answer what a "reasonable person" would do in a specific scenario under the law you propose, you are presumed to be punting because you know there is no "reasonable" answer.
uhhh......
To quote:
> The reasonable person standard is by no means democratic in its scope; it is, contrary to popular conception, intentionally distinct from that of the "average person," who is not necessarily guaranteed to always be reasonable.
You should read up on this idea a bit before posting further, you've made assumptions that are not true.
> Toll roads charge vehicles based upon the number of axles they have.
So now you've proposed an entirely different kind of law because considering what happens in the application of the original one revealed an issue. Maybe doing this is actually beneficial.
> The law is much better than you at doing this, they've literally been doing it for hundreds of years. It's not the impossible task you imagine it to be.
Judges are not empowered to replace vehicle registration fees or CAFE standards with toll roads even if the original rules are problematic or fail to achieve their intended purpose. You have to go back to the legislature for that, who would have been better to choose differently to begin with, which is only possible if you think through the implications of what you're proposing, which is my point.
You are expressing a position which is both common and disingenuous.
> Too many technical people think of the law as executable code and if you can find a gap in it, then you can get away with things on a technicality. That's not how the law works (spirit vs letter).
The government passes a law that applies a different rule to cars than trucks and then someone has to decide if the Chevrolet El Camino is a car or a truck. The inevitability of these distinctions is a weak excuse for being unable to answer basic questions about what you're proposing. The law is going to classify the vehicle as one thing or the other and if someone asks you the question you should be able to answer it just as a judge would be expected to answer it.
Which is a necessary incident to evaluating what a law does. If it's a car and vehicles classified as trucks have to pay a higher registration fee because they do more damage to the road, you have a way to skirt the intent of the law. If it's a truck and vehicles classified as trucks have to meet a more lax emissions standard, or having a medium-sized vehicle classified as a truck allows a manufacturer to sell more large trucks while keeping their average fuel economy below the regulatory threshold, you have a way to skirt the intent of the law.
Obviously this matters if you're trying to evaluate whether the law will be effective -- if there is an obvious means to skirt the intent of the law, it won't be. And so saying that the judge will figure it out is a fraud, because in actual fact the judge will have to do one thing or the other and what the judge does will determine whether the law is effective for a given purpose.
You can have all the "reasonable person" standards you want, but if you cannot answer what a "reasonable person" would do in a specific scenario under the law you propose, you are presumed to be punting because you know there is no "reasonable" answer.