> except that the entire law isn't defined in one place

> These things are knowable

There are absolutely undefined, unknowable areas of law that are waiting on future SCOTUS decisions to be defined.

Heck, we can’t even rely on past SCOTUS decisions.

Even in extremely well-defined law like whether LEO’s have valid PC to search someone during a traffic stop, two different judges in the same district will disagree and appeals courts / state supreme courts can rule quite inconsistently.

That’s by definition not just undefined behavior but also non-deterministic results.

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kstrauser 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree. I just mean, you can pretty well know today's state, at least hypothetically. But you better be watching tomorrow's legal news to see if anything important changed.

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dchftcs 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Someone has to be in the news first, and then you learn about it. To that someone, the change you see in tomorrow's legal news is today, was yesterday. It's more a gamble than you think, you just don't feel it until it bites you.

	▲	kstrauser 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		FWIW, we're in complete agreement. I stand by mt original statement that these things are nearly impossible for a layperson to be competent in. It's hard enough for people who do it every day for a living. An equivalent would be non-techies saying "I'm not going to pay a software engineer. Just tell the computer what you want it to do!" And that might sound reasonable to other non-techies, while you and I roll our eyes and laugh. I'm sure CPAs and tax attorneys and the like think the same when they hear engineers talk about filing their own non-trivial taxes.

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33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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