51–60 of 62 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about in the case of daylight savings? Do you need to add an extra hour?
> immediately before the start of the corresponding day A month ends at the end of a day, regardless of the length of that day or any other day during the month.
The OP's request was to make it simpler.
With time, you often can't do that without edge cases.
I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…
IANAL, but given this case is in an ACT court the ACT’s Legislation Act 2001 [0] (perhaps better named than ‘Acts Interpretation Act 1901’) is probably the more relevant piece of legislation in this case, and defines a ‘month’ like this: "month" means a period beginning at the start of any day of one of the calendar months and ending— (a) immediately before the start of the corresponding day of the next calendar mont…
Time is complicated when it comes to implementing strict rules. There will always be situations that can be interpreted in more than one way. This is why laws need not only the letter (what) but also the spirit (the why). When the letter of the law proves ambiguous, the spirit can be used to come up with a resolution.
for days before Feb 29th you get to the next year by adding 365 days on years except the leap year. so for 2000-2004. [366, 365, 365, 365]
for days after Feb 29th you get to the next year by adding 365 days on years except the year before the leap year. so for 2004-2004. [365, 365, 365, 366]
if you use one of these rules for Feb 29th you get the next year falling on Feb 28th or Mar 1st for non-leap years..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason is not a moralizing one, it came into being when the registries were less than perfect to avoid bigamy. It probably could be abandoned in the present day without any loss of functionality but it definitely was not codified into law for moralizing reasons.
Isn't bigamy typically a religious moral?
I'm a marriage celebrant here in Australia and a couple must, by law, give "one month" notice before they wish to be married. This is surprisingly complicated. A good percentage of the training and the accreditation were related to the calculation of this month. The Attorney General's Department sent out a fact-sheet earlier this year, clarifying "one month" and giving a bunch of examples. A few months later they upd…
A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.
This really goes against what the spirit of these sorts of laws should be. The 18 barrier to age of majority is treated as a threshold, sure, but the reality of people is they mature in different ways and over longer periods of time. I (and my culture I guess) considered myself an adult by 16 or 17 whilst friends I know didn't consider themselves adults until 22 or 23. The thing I know is under the law, everyone need…
I'm 34 and still don't consider myself an adult. With this in mind, if I break the law can I please be tried as a minor?
According to my experience PostgreSQL is very efficient at this game (and many other ones). "select (date '2000-02-29' + interval '18 years')" returns "2018-02-28 00:00:00", so the Court may be right.
Doesn't this just divert the decision making process to the PostgreSQL developers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A typical case of making something more complex than needed. They could have simply used a window of time specified as no less than 30 days and no more than 45 days. That would have solved the problem in an elegant and robust way.
What about in the case of daylight savings? Do you need to add an extra hour?
Daylight savings time switches happen in the middle of the night, IIRC at 2am or 3am.
I absolutely don't see the issue here. The suspect was not 18 at the time of the crime.
It's not difficult, is it? I'm not sure why there's any debate whatsoever.
The article is saying that the justices disagree on when you become an adult. One justice is saying that you become an adult 18 years after you're born, but how are years defined by the law?
It could be defined as "365 days, or 366 days if the time period starts after February 28th of a year preceding a leap year". Instead, the law first defines "N months" to always end on the last day of the final month if there aren't enough days in that final month, and then a year is simply 12 months.
This is actually sensible. If you enter a 1-year contract on Feb 29th, it makes sense that it ends on Feb 28th rather than Mar 1st the next year.
Therefore you become an adult 216 months after you're born, which in the case of this girl happened on the last day of February 2018 (because February 29th 2018 didn't exist). I agree that this is a problem, but if the problem lies in the law's definition of "becoming adult", it might not even be possible for judges to fix it.
Assuming it is actually possible for them to fix it, the alternative definition could have been "on the day of your 18th birthday", but really you need a more precise the definition actually must accommodate February 29th and push it to March 1st. For example, as the other justice puts it, "until your 18th birthday has begun or passed" (as if February 29th 2018 existed but was of length zero). Of course you'd have to find out whether any other laws are in conflict with this definition, and possibly fix all the computer programs that were assuming the old definition (for example, would she have voted on February 28th 2018? would that change with the new definition?).
BTW at least in Italy, if the justices reach parity they have to judge in favor of the defendant. In that case she would be declared not an adult. But the ancillary question of e.g. elections would not be resolved.