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 If the letter of the law doesn't enforce the spirit of the law, it was poorly written or it's out of date and needs to be amended.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

▲

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.)