Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

Two things:

Don't confuse the adversarial process with the post-adversarial process.

Don't confuse civil and criminal cases.

On the first: The adversarial process is between two sides, maybe you and a company, or two companies, or you and the government, whatever. The adversarial process ends when someone wins or loses.

During the adversarial process, the judge is basically a referee. This is an oversimplification, but close enough. Beyond that, they mostly are trying to get all of the info out on the table, so the dispute can be resolved.

If you want to be an asshole to the other side, you can be as much of an asshole as the referee lets you get away with, and this is going to vary depending on lots of things. This is true in many contexts (sports, for example).

But once that's done, the judge is not a referee anymore. They decide the remedy. If you are an asshole to them, that is not going to go well.

This is also true in many contexts - talk shit to the guy who knocked you down on the pitch, maybe you get a yellow card. Talk shit to the ref after they card you, they'll throw your ass out of the game, and fine or suspend you afterwards for doing it.

On the second - criminal cases have both a different burden of proof, and a different effective set of expectations of behavior, because of the stakes.

FWIW - the various rules of professional conduct explicitly go into various roles and hats that lawyers (and judges) often wear, and the acceptable behaviors during those roles.

At some point it has to be documented as to the decisions made and the reasoning.

If there is literally no documentation up until the final moment, doesn't that itself act as evidence that they were consciously and deliberately not wanting their reasoning documented?

Why not just do the right thing. Damn.

> Companies are revenue maximizers, period.

This explanatory model explains a lot of what companies do but not all. It is a useful first approximation for many firms.

Still, the conceit of modeling an organization as a rational individual only gets you so far. It works for certain levels of analysis, I will grant. But to build more detailed predictive models, more complexity is needed. For example, organizational inertia is a thing. One would be wise to factor in some mechanism for constrained rationality and/or “irrational” deviations. CEOs often move in herds, for example.

> The ones that aren't quickly get displaced by ones that are.

Theory, meet history. But more seriously, will you lay out what you mean by quickly? And what does market data show? Has this been studied empirically? (I’m aware that it is a theoretical consequence of some particular market theories — but I don’t think successful financial modelers would make that claim without getting much more specific.)

You didn't read what I wrote and that is apparent in your response. You didn't address any of the facts and instead just blindly parroted back the equivalent of "it's true because they say it's true". If you think I'm the first person to argue that the reasonableness standard is unreasonable, you'd be mistaken.

I stated that establishing reasonableness was hard enough with a jury of peers judging just one person in a more limited scope and more facts available and a very high burden of proof. The number of cases overturned based on differing views of "reasonableness" is proof that it isn't an objective standard of anything.

> Reasonable isn't a state of mind,

How can you define reasonableness without either directly or indirectly including subjectivity? If you add subjectiveness, then it is indeed a state of mind with different subjects (minds) having different conclusions.

Reasonableness is akin to Platonic Idealism. It assumes there is some hypothetical human who represents the reasonableness of humanity, but that is unreasonable.

As a simple example, would a reasonable person allow a trans person to use the bathroom of their choice? Ask a person on the left, a person on the right, a SME, and a trans person and you are likely to get a whole spectrum of reasonableness so wide that the two extremes would be complete opposites.

Would you trust the reasonableness of an all-white Mississippi jury judging a black man in the 1800s? This shows that reasonableness is at best a bad approximation of what the majority of the people in a specific group agree about a specific topic. This has almost nothing to do with objectivity and everything to do with subjectivity and is a state of mind rather than objective truth.

> how can your worldview ever deal with laws that DO involve a state of mind?

Mens Rea is taught to have both a subjective and objective component. The entire point of "beyond reasonable doubt" is that you should have clear indicators of the crime. This is no different with Mens Rea and someone should not be convicted strictly on a subjective "they look guilty to me" basis. The standard is still "beyond reasonable doubt" which means the overwhelming evidence for Mens Rea should be objective rather than subjective ("reasonableness" is subjective).

It is better to let the guilty go free than punish the innocent. If there is not objective evidence of Mens Rea beyond reasonable doubt, then there should not be a conviction on that charge. This is the only way to reduce wrongful conviction.

> This isn't some huge problem in the legal world, we rely on evidence and the reasonable conclusions and inferences you can make from the evidence.

This is a massive problem that you paper away until some trial makes the news and it is once again shown that there is very little agreement at large about what passes as "reasonable".

While we're on the topic, would you care to explain the utter unreasonable logic and outcomes behind qualified immunity? If you'd like a very specific example, what about the one where the cop draws his gun on a non-aggressive dog not caring that a little girl is behind it. He then shoots the girl instead of the dog and is protected by SCOTUS having crafted law out of nothing because it would be argued that he acted "reasonably" (even though it would 100% be a criminal conviction were the badge removed from the equation).

I'll say again that reasonableness is almost completely unreasonable.

All of this is speaking only of criminal law where the Mens Rea is (generally) limited to a single incident by a single person. When you involve many people (most not directly involved and some potentially from different places, cultures, and legal systems) over time and what all of them consider to be reasonable would be unreasonable enough. Making a judge qualified to judge the actions of these people as reasonable or unreasonable then hold an entirely different group of people (a group almost certainly unaware and with no reasonable means of becoming aware) responsible for those actions is also unreasonable.

And of course, a judge writing up stuff she isn't a SME in is going to be seen as unreasonable by a supermajority of people. Should the burger flipper at McDonalds be writing up criteria about how brain surgery should be conducted? Would you consider his judgement about how that brain surgery was conducted to be reasonable? I think not.

Then we should just eliminate all the laws and instead pass one law that says "don't be evil" and just let the judges/juries make it up as they go.

The truth is that you don't believe your own argument. You want LOTS of laws specifying all kinds of unacceptable behaviors in great detail. You only differ from me in where that line should be drawn.