I wonder what the difference in legal traditions is between the US and the Old World. The latter have a lot of "Yes, you're technically in trouble under the guidelines the enforcement authority rules using but they're going to make an exception for you, for now" and the former have a lot of "Yes, the spirit was to block this kind of thing but the letter of the law is that you do get away with it".

What informed this kind of difference? Is there one?

The US approach seems very much like the way Orthodox Jews follow the halakha by making workarounds around it.

▲ Loughla 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

One is following the law and the other isn't.

If the letter of the law doesn't enforce the spirit of the law, it was poorly written or it's out of date and needs to be amended.

In theory, the US system allows for those updates. In reality it's a little less clear. Currently we're absolutely moving to the fealty to the crown system and it's not great.

Any system that makes specific carve outs for anyone to not follow the letter of the law is not about enforcing the law, it's about maintaining control using arbitrary enforcement and chronyism (not sure of that spelling).

The system of workarounds for religious customs has always fascinated me. I will follow the letter of the law, because I have to. If I don't agree with the laws, I can move. If I was in a faith tradition and finding workarounds for the intent of the law, I would choose a different faith. To me it's very binary; either you are or you aren't [Religion]. Using technicalities on your deity just feels like a suckers game to make your current and any possible afterlife worse. Like God is just going to say, "oh man you really got one over on me." Makes zero sense.

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gcanyon 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> If the letter of the law doesn't enforce the spirit of the law, it was poorly written or it's out of date and needs to be amended.

I think if you rewrite that to, “If the letter of the law is demonstrably out of sync with the public sense of the spirit of the law, then it should be amended,” I’m with you.

But I think that’s not what you meant? If you meant “the letter of the law should define prescribed and proscribed behavior exactly,” then I think that’s impossible.

There will always be exceptions, and no set of rules can be exhaustive. The system should allow for humans to recognize that fact.

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arjie 2 days ago | parent [-]

Here is a fun exploration of that concept: https://novehiclesinthepark.com/

	▲	ralferoo a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah, apparently my views match others 85% of the time, but I thought it was funny about how my views of what is a vehicle differs a lot from other people on ones I thought would be not controversial. Things like only 15% of people think a wheelchair is a vehicle but people seem evenly split on a bike being a vehicle or not. Even stranger 40% of people think a police car isn't a vehicle. That to me shows that people aren't answering the question asked "is this a vehicle" but answering the subtext "should this be allowed in the park". Or in other words, they're trying to bend the concept of what is and isn't a vehicle to an inviolable rule rather than saying what is and isn't a vehicle (and some are tricky) and then amending the rule to fit. That is problematic as they're applying their own biases on the intention of the rule rather than understanding what the rule maker thought. There's also some others where I answered overly literally, e.g. the plane over the park. In my jurisdiction, that wouldn't be considered to be in the park, and so I answered that it wasn't. If that plane had crash landed in the the park, then obviously it would be a vehicle and in the park. So, I wasn't answering based on whether it was a vehicle, but whether it was in the park. Equally, a lot of questions seem designed to include toys where I'd see no possible interpretation for them to be a vehicle, e.g. the toy car. I also happen to know that in my country, skates and foot-powered skateboards aren't legally considered to be vehicles, but bikes are, so I answered that way even if I personally think they should be classified as vehicles. And a tank is still a vehicle, even if it no longer has an engine it's just an inoperable vehicle.
	▲	Dylan16807 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's mostly an exploration of how laws need to define terms. It's also an exploration of how people will ignore instructions to answer based on letter or spirit alone. (I bet asking separately about both for each scenario is the only way to get clean data.)

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azornathogron a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> chronyism (not sure of that spelling)

Since you mentioned you weren't sure: it's "cronyism", no 'h'.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cronyism

This is despite having an etymology that - at least according to etymonline - does come from greek "khronos"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/cronyism

▲ AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The latter have a lot of "Yes, you're technically in trouble under the guidelines the enforcement authority rules using but they're going to make an exception for you, for now" and the former have a lot of "Yes, the spirit was to block this kind of thing but the letter of the law is that you do get away with it".

The latter system is what happens if you actually have rule of law. The law says X is illegal, you did not do X, therefore you cannot be prosecuted. Meanwhile anyone caught doing X is prosecuted or it's a scandal that they're seen getting away with it.

The former is autocracy in a trench coat. Whether you're in violation of the law is irrelevant because the laws are so numerous and ambiguous that everyone is always in violation of the law and the only thing that matters is if the prosecutors want to charge you.

Sadly the US is moving more towards the "traditional" system rather than the other way around.

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arjie 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, I tend to agree. Understanding what forces brought it to be may help preserve it and bring it to more places.

The US is moving in various ways, true, but certainly I think the diminishing of Chevron deference is a move towards clearer law. Agency actors have always acted in a capricious way but they’re now far more susceptible to capture than in prior eras (or at least it’s much more visible) so reducing their power offers more transparency.

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leonidasrup 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US was moving in the wrong direction for a long time.

Three Felonies a Day

" Silverglate’s book first explains how law should work, and then demonstrates how federal law really works as he weaves through dozens of cases showing clear prosecutorial abuse. An ugly, recurrent feature is that prosecutors often manipulate the media. "

https://fee.org/articles/three-felonies-a-day-how-the-feds-t...

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stackghost 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Whether you're in violation of the law is irrelevant because the laws are so numerous and ambiguous that everyone is always in violation of the law and the only thing that matters is if the prosecutors want to charge you.

This situation currently describes the USA.

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AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-]

And that's bad, right?

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arjie 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think it’s a matter of belief and while I’d prefer adherence to the rule of law and enforcement in general I can see why people allow for not-that.

As an example, here’s a post on /r/sanfrancisco https://old.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/1uvebed/block...

You’ll see that a large number of people believe that while the letter of the law is violated, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure that applies all the way to the top.

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AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent [-]

> You’ll see that a large number of people believe that while the letter of the law is violated, it’s not a big deal.

The correct way to deal with this is to make the law do what people actually want. It's entirely possible to draft a law where actually blocking the sidewalk is a violation but the nose of a car extending into it by a few inches isn't considered blocked. And the way to get that law is to enforce the existing law so that the people who don't like it will have it changed instead of having a law that everybody is violating but only the disfavored have it enforced against them.

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arjie 2 days ago | parent [-]

Well, that's a bit pie-in-the-sky, right? The 'correct' way is for no one to inconvenience someone else. I have no magic wand that can make that happen. I also have no magic wand that can make authorities enforce the law. The government is just a mechanism for people to share common resources in a way that enables groups to work together with some (aspired-low) degree of free-riding.

So it's true that one level of depth is "enforce the law and unjust laws will be repealed", but the second level is "people prefer to not enforce the law" and "people decide the government" so it's meta-structures that determine outcomes here. As an example, some kinds of laws are more effective than others.

The CIA Sabotage Manual offers some techniques to introduce stalling and sabotage good organization function but it seems like the opposite is a currently-unsolved problem.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> So it's true that one level of depth is "enforce the law and unjust laws will be repealed", but the second level is "people prefer to not enforce the law" and "people decide the government" so it's meta-structures that determine outcomes here. The thing about "people" is that they're us. If we don't want a capricious autocracy then we have to make different choices. > The CIA Sabotage Manual offers some techniques to introduce stalling and sabotage good organization function but it seems like the opposite is a currently-unsolved problem. The reason those techniques work is precisely because people pretend to have rule of law while in practice facilitating tyranny and office politics. The sabotage operates by playing into the hypocrisy and demanding that all of the stupid rules people have been ignoring actually be implemented. The way to prevent it is to reform the rules, but that isn't in the interest of the people using vague/unreasonable rules to their own advantage, so actually reforming them encounters resistance and takes time and in the meantime you can keep using them to throw sand in the gears. Notice how poorly that would work in both a formal authoritarian dictatorship and system with true rule of law. In the dictatorship the dictator does whatever they want and you can't make them do or not do anything by pointing to rules. In a system with rule of law, the rules are already being followed so that stupid/unreasonable rules are reformed as they're encountered and you can't use the massive backlog of them to make everything grind to a halt while people scramble to do all at once the thing they should have been doing continuously over time.

▲ zarzavat 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the UK there is substantial use of secondary legislation. This is where Parliament authorises someone else to make laws on its behalf in some context. These powers delegated by Parliament are usually mundane but can be extreme and there's no limit to what powers Parliament can delegate. Since politicians are lazy they tend to use secondary legislation all the time. This encourages a culture of legislative sloppiness.

While the UK courts have given themselves the power to perform judicial review, there is no constitutional basis for this review and so the courts are reluctant to step on Parliament's toes because if they go too far they risk Parliament deciding that it doesn't like the courts' interference and removing their authority. This isn't a hypothetical and the courts have at times resorted to some crazy mental gymnastics to evade Parliament's attempts to prevent judicial review.

The US has a similar concept that enables federal agencies to make regulations on Congress's behalf but it's much more limited in scope due to the separation of powers and more solid position of the US Supreme Court.

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arjie 2 days ago | parent [-]

I believe the analogous concept is Chevron deference here in the US. It must be a relatively easy optimization to make to reduce legislative load considering it arises so often. Interesting.

One funny thing in California that is relevant is lane splitting. It is legal but guidelines are decided on by the CHP (state police). In practice, this means they have discretion to pull you over.

I must imagine this is like the creation of Shadow IT in organizations. In the past, when you made it hard to get a server or whatever, you’d end up with your org building their software somewhere else where IT can’t see it.

This must be the legal innovation that matches that: if law is hard to pass, shove a bunch of things off into Shadow Legislative which can then change rules on a whim.

It’s essentially a mechanism to re-enable rapid decision making in a sclerotic system. So perhaps the US using it less than the Old World is simply an artifact of age (though extant nations vary, the legal traditions of the Old World seem to have endured) and in time we will see it dominate the US as well.

	▲	vikramkr 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Cheveron deference is no longer active unfortunately

▲ cineticdaffodil 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

First hacker culture there ever was. Hacking the words of god, to make life easier. Makes you pre-disposed to excell in science, that kind of thinking and learning..

▲ joe_mamba 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably because the US was founded by the immigrants who fled because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries, and designed a system that's diametral opposed to that, for better and for worse.

▲ seszett 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> immigrants who fled because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries

I'm not convinced, as the people who designed the US system had extensive exchanges with the ones who ended up designing the modern French one, which became the basis for most of the rest of Europe (bar the UK).

The US and continental European systems were both designed in concert and in opposition to how the old European monarchies worked.

	▲	joe_mamba 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		>The US and continental European systems were both designed in concert and in opposition to how the old European monarchies worked. Don't know the exact details about the US, but if you look at how the some EU countries and the EU is run today, it really isn't that much different than European monarchies of old in practice, even if on paper it's different. Like, you have nobles from the ancient von der Leyen German noble family appointed to leadership positions by falling upwards via no direct election by the people, enforcing unpopular laws like chat control, that were rejected 3 times, by calling an emergency election during summer time when opposition was on vacation. And if you vocally criticize the nobility online too much, they'll ban your content on social media for some BS reason at best, or send police to your house with court orders to intimidate you at worst. This isn't in opposition to monarchies, we just replaced monarchies with another form of power structure that has the same goal: keep the peasants quiet, obedient and paying taxes. There's a reason history keeps repeating itself: A fish coming from water will only know water.

▲ arjie 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Right, that's what I'd lean to as well.

But was the reason they left the legal tradition? In this telling of the story, they were fully aware of the legal tradition being the reason for their unhappiness. But is it true?

I know the original immigrants/colonists were looking for a specific kind of religious freedom they couldn't have, but you must be speaking of the later waves (which are the majority of people).

I remember ages ago reading this paper (PDF warning): https://annesofiebeckknudsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...

It made the case that (simplifying) individualists left for the US while collectivists stayed. And because of the massive scale of the migration relative to the populations, this meant that the two regions were permanently altered. Cool, eh?

But I don't know if the thesis has been supported by alternative tests. Essentially, it's what I feel is true, but I've felt many things are true and been wrong many times!

	▲	Joker_vD 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The original immigrants/colonists were Puritans and their approach to the governing and liberties, well, it can be arguably called proto-totalitarian. Remember, those were the same kind of people that managed, of all things, to push the Parliament to prohibit celebrations of Christmas and Easter during the English Interregnum, despite massive popular backlash. The Puritans in the American colonies had roughly the same attitude: `Christmas observance was outlawed in Boston in 1659, with a fine of five shillings. The ban by the Puritans was revoked in 1681 by an English appointed governor, Edmund Andros; however, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region. Before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it was not widely celebrated in the American Colonies.` There is much written about the Puritans in the North America; their ideas, sadly, influenced the American political thinking and culture a lot.
	▲	BigTTYGothGF 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> original immigrants/colonists were looking for a specific kind of religious freedom they couldn't have The ones who landed at Plymouth Rock were, sort of, but I'm not sure how representative they were of the time.

▲ BigTTYGothGF 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries

48/56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were born in the 13 colonies, and I think for a lot of them what they hated about the way the system worked is that they weren't fully part of it. ("No taxation without representation")