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Why Law Is Law-Shaped

lawvm.org

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41–50 of 73 posts

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#41

Post by dgreisen »

This is very cool, and exceptionally well-thought-out. I particularly like how they are working with the existing legal/legislative institutions to fix the issues at their source rather than creating yet another unofficial version.

We've built the Open Law Platform that governments can use to do this with their official laws. We just launched with the Maryland Secretary of State last month at regs.maryland.gov. You can see the "source code" at https://github.com/maryland-dsd/law-xml, and the "compiled" code at any point in time since they started using our system at https://github.com/maryland-dsd/law-xml-codified and https://github.com/maryland-dsd/law-html. All cryptographically signed at https://github.com/maryland-dsd/law.

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#42

Post by rogerrogerr »

> Parliament cannot restate the entire legal corpus each session.

This is probably bad for some reasons, but I have wondered about a system where the legislature does have to restate the entire legal corpus every session. Like, everything resets at the end of the year and whatever didn’t get passed in the last 12 months is no longer law. Paired with some kind of rule that says you can’t just vote to pass “everything that already exists”.

In my fantasy, there would be less weird cruft in the law, and less bikeshedding about stuff that really should be done.

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#43

Post by lkm0 »

keiferski wrote: post #3

In an entirely different qualitative sense, this post reminded me of the short story by Kafka, Before the Law. I won’t paste the whole thing here, but it’s a really short read: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/st.mueller/kafka_english.html An article on the story: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/BeforeTheLaw.html

Kafka (who apparently had a great sense of humor) seems to really enjoy writing people who die from too much second guessing. In the trial, K. keep failing by attempting to outplay the system at every step, because he thinks that he can stay above it all (don't we all). It's what you might call an awfully credible idiot plot.

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#44

Post by vessenes »

ekns wrote: post #25
vessenes wrote: post #18

Man, I hated last year’s clanker-tone, and I hate this one’s too by now. I don’t want to read the word load-bearing ever again. The reminder that there’s structure and content and they’re different is a good one. Even a small legal document has this microstructure of references, inside, outside explicitly and outside by inference.

I get it, it's not ideal. Yet there is no one else doing this work so I put effort where I think it's most neglected - which isn't fully refined prose, imo.

I appreciate the work! And I hear you; writing is a lot of work, especially if you don’t need the benefits of synthesis it gives the writer.

I’ve cadged some rules somewhere for de-LLMing the text; if I can find them I’ll post a follow up link. They don’t help with structure though - and I think this is arguably the most important bit - taking the reader through a logical progression. I didn’t read carefully enough to opine on your structure, but again, thanks for doing this!

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#45

Post by mishellaneous »

ekns wrote: post #25
vessenes wrote: post #18

Man, I hated last year’s clanker-tone, and I hate this one’s too by now. I don’t want to read the word load-bearing ever again. The reminder that there’s structure and content and they’re different is a good one. Even a small legal document has this microstructure of references, inside, outside explicitly and outside by inference.

I get it, it's not ideal. Yet there is no one else doing this work so I put effort where I think it's most neglected - which isn't fully refined prose, imo.

some people would, in this case, prefer the unrefined version

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#46

Post by dmbche »

keiferski wrote: post #3

In an entirely different qualitative sense, this post reminded me of the short story by Kafka, Before the Law. I won’t paste the whole thing here, but it’s a really short read: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/st.mueller/kafka_english.html An article on the story: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/BeforeTheLaw.html

Big thanks this was a wonderful read. Maybe I'll get The Trial today, I tried The Castle and didn't like it but y'know

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#47

Post by dxdm »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #42

> Parliament cannot restate the entire legal corpus each session. This is probably bad for some reasons, but I have wondered about a system where the legislature does have to restate the entire legal corpus every session. Like, everything resets at the end of the year and whatever didn’t get passed in the last 12 months is no longer law. Paired with some kind of rule that says you can’t just vote to pass “everything…

Seems to be one of those things where you think about them for a minute and go, huh, that'd be neat, but then you think about it some more how it'd play out in the real world, and that's when it starts to get actually interesting.

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#48

Post by keiferski »

dmbche wrote: post #46
keiferski wrote: post #3

In an entirely different qualitative sense, this post reminded me of the short story by Kafka, Before the Law. I won’t paste the whole thing here, but it’s a really short read: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/st.mueller/kafka_english.html An article on the story: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/BeforeTheLaw.html

Big thanks this was a wonderful read. Maybe I'll get The Trial today, I tried The Castle and didn't like it but y'know

Personally I like Kafka’s short stories more than his novels, so I’d look for a collection of those first. (And The Trial too.)

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#49

Post by yxhuvud »

This is a good start even if the list of actions is not complete - we have seen sections move around unchanged between totally different laws, as well as edit conflicts where a place in a text gets changed into different results multiple times at the same date. The way amendment happens is also wildly different between different jurisdictions - some replace on singular word level (like Denmark) while other replace whole sections (like Sweden).

Now add targeted annotations and other commentary done by specialists into the picture and the real fun begins.

Re: Why Law Is Law-Shaped

#50

Post by rocmcd »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #42

> Parliament cannot restate the entire legal corpus each session. This is probably bad for some reasons, but I have wondered about a system where the legislature does have to restate the entire legal corpus every session. Like, everything resets at the end of the year and whatever didn’t get passed in the last 12 months is no longer law. Paired with some kind of rule that says you can’t just vote to pass “everything…

Maybe not every 12 months / session, but I definitely think having a way to "sunset" certain types of laws would be a net positive on society.
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