| ▲ | Why Law Is Law-Shaped(lawvm.org) |
| 42 points by ekns 3 hours ago | 20 comments |
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| ▲ | keiferski 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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 |
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| ▲ | CamelCaseName a minute ago | parent | next [-] | | Like the other replies, I also didn't understand it, so I asked Gemini. Forgive my use of AI, but I can't seem to summarize it any better. > Permission is a Trap: The gatekeeper never uses physical force. The man fails because he accepts the psychological deterrence. He waits for external approval instead of acting. > Systems are Designed to Stall: Bureaucracy exists to keep individuals waiting. Complying with arbitrary rules and being infinitely patient yields absolutely zero results. > Your Path is Individual: The gate was made only for this specific man. By deferring to authority, he surrendered an opportunity tailored entirely to him. > Action Over Compliance: The story is a warning against passive obedience. The system will gladly let you sit outside and rot if you never force the issue. I don't understand #3, but the rest, especially #4 really ring true. | |
| ▲ | quietbritishjim 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for the interesting read. But, I have to say, I didn't understand it at all. | | |
| ▲ | gilleain 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes I thought at the start it was about how our expectations of how the law works are at odds with the reality So the gatekeeper is the system keeping us from Justice - mostly money, but also other less tangible barriers. In theory, everyone gets a lawyer, in practice some people can afford expensive ones. Then the end twist got me confused. | | |
| ▲ | nemomarx 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The end twist makes me think it's about an individual attempt to learn and understand the law, but I'm not sure what the inner gatekeepers would represent there. Something about how we want to understand The Law, capital letters, but then there's only systems we make ourselves and understand ourselves would feel properly Kafka, I suppose. But you think that would be mapped to journeying towards some kind of Law? |
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| ▲ | awesomeMilou 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Excercising your rights is a duty, responsibility and experience that is individual to everyone. | |
| ▲ | bombcar 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, it was very kafkaesque. (I also didn't get it.) |
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| ▲ | ChaosOp 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As a fellow Finn (and a lawyer), super interesting work Elias! And thank you for reporting the inconsistencies you found to Finlex |
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| ▲ | eqmvii an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| my favorite quote in this space has always been: the prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more profound, are what i mean by the law. |
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| ▲ | vessenes 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | eru 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I guess this is not meant as a general introduction, but it would have been useful to acknowledge the differences between different legal systems somewhere at the start? (Even if it's only to argue that they aren't all that different in practice.) |
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| ▲ | james-bcn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Audrey Tang did a lot of things related to this whilst they were Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang |
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| ▲ | dvh an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Parliament cannot restate the entire legal corpus each session. IMHO the biggest mistake. It should be like that. Because right now for mere mortal it's impossible to find out if some law or paragraph is still in effect. |
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| ▲ | mishellaneous 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | that would slow down the process considerably. it would also not be of much use to the professionals, which i guess make up the majority of those involved most of the time, and so, i guess, would not have much support. IMO a good middle ground could be attained by everyone having some understanding of the legal system. we could use school for that. i mean, we cover calculus and ancient history, it's not like covering law to some extent would be harder | |
| ▲ | qnpnpmqppnp an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | How would it work though? Also, not sure what makes it so impossible (debates on whether a given law is in effect seem pretty rare, though it does exist), but that may depend on where you come from and the applicable legal system. |
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| ▲ | fractallyte 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Interesting synchronicity: I've written a patent-drafting DSL which exactly parallels this – and which is now shaping up into an "IDE" for patent drafting... Patent texts read as prose, but are actually precisely structured legal documents. The latest developments in this domain involve LLMs to create and modify patent documents, but even though the legal profession seems to have fallen all in on it, it's essentially rather fragile and error-prone. I've gone the deterministic direction, which has opened up some very cool, previously unexplored, possibilities! |
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| ▲ | mishellaneous 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Patent texts read as prose, but are actually precisely structured legal documents. at that point why not just use something precise like a programming language? have there been efforts in that direction? genuine questions | | |
| ▲ | fractallyte 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I have no idea. A few months ago, for the first time in my life, I had to write a patent document. It was very complicated – too complicated. Noting the structure, I searched for tools, but found only LLMs. So I wrote my own tool. The amusing thing is, LLMs prefer the DSL-structured document! |
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| ▲ | ekns 11 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Interesting indeed! What have you learned from the patent space and what kinds of questions can you answer after perhaps solving that domain? |
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| ▲ | TZubiri an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
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