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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7326 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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An important thing to keep in mind about Law:

PDF: The Law is a Fractal: The Attempt to Anticipate Everything

For instance, we might consider a municipal park for which a city had adopted the rule, “no vehicles are allowed in the park.” We could treat “Point 1” on the number line as representing the act of driving a car through the park and “Point 2” as representing refraining from driving a car through the park. The rule would assign the label of “illegal” to Point 1 and “legal” to Point 2. ^5

As has been famously pointed out,^6 these two points and the rule itself are insufficient to cover all the specific factual situations that might arise involving vehicles in a park. At least they are insufficient in any reasonable rule system.^7 What if, for example, a police vehicle has to enter the park on an emergency call? If we want an appropriate, specific rule, we would need another point, between Points 1 and 2, corresponding to the factual scenario, “A police vehicle entering the park.” Point 1.5, let’s call it, to which we would assign, like Point 2, the label “legal.” But what if the driver of the car were a thief who had stolen it from the police? That specific scenario would fall between Points 1 and 1.5, perhaps 1.2, and would be assigned the label “illegal.”^8

And so on. Given the numberless potential variations, foreseeable and unforeseeable, in “vehicles,” motives, and circumstances, there can, provably,^9 be no end to the possible specific scenarios—and thus no limit on the number of rules that would result from trying to write an appropriate one for each possible, distinct fact situation.^10

If the Law is not clear then who gets to decide the rule? I don’t think it’s clear that Courts get to. Thinking about the 14th Amendment I don’t think it’s clear the SC gets to make the decision. Jurisdiction has meaning and I don’t see why the SC gets to choose the meaning. Reasonable people can have different meanings.

Ideally the legislature would clarify. I am not sure how this would work with an Amendment. Could a simple bill make the decision or do you need to amend the amendment for clarification? I definitely think the legislature gets first crack at it but I am not sure what process is necessary a bill or amendment to clarify an amendment. If it’s only a bill then you could to limited extent be modify the Constitution whenever the legislature changes.

If the legislature does nothing then who gets to decide the meaning of “Jurisdiction”. I don’t believe the courts should do anything that would be creating policy. The definition of jurisdiction isn’t in the amendment. They have nothing to base a decision.

Absent legislative action then I guess the executive branch gets to define the word and citizenship status is just an executive order. And if your born 2 min before a GOP POTUS leaves you are a non-citizen for life and if your born minutes later your a citizen for life. Legislative or Executive Action each are more Democratic when bills are passed that lack clarity on meaning.

But I do think in most situations you can write legislation that solves 90-95% of cases in footnotes to legislation. A lot of legislation is written very poorly.

It would seem like we could have a hierarchy of laws. If No Vehicles in the park is a rank 4 law and police may proceed on any available path or road in an emergency with their sirens and lights operating is a rank 3 law then both can coexist because a rank 3 exception supercedes a rank 4 law.

Isn't that part of what the common law system does? A practical hierarchy is created and citations refer back to prior precedent in applying the unwritten hierarchy.

Okay but what about say a wheel chair? It is a vehicle. Maybe you have ADA so perhaps that trumps.

What about stroller?

In law school I asked, "what about shoes?" The professors liked it I suppose.

Great little quiz/game about this https://novehiclesinthepark.com/

It's just in general really difficult to come up with a rule that is

  1. Simple to track and consistently enforce

  2. Covers all potential cases, including adversarial readings.

  3. Doesn't confuse a good number of people with legitimate arguments to how it can be interpreted.

I got 100% on the quiz. Seemed straightforward to me.

My experience as a moderator has definitely colored my opinions on the law and rules. I think the intention and purpose of a law are very important. And the letter of the law is not very important. Also people can violate rules and the authorities can decide 'no punishment'. Thus police car and ambulance are violation of the rule, but not necessarily a punishable violation.

Honestly I took it and scored 93% in the majority. So the rule seems clear to me.

96% here, and my exception A non-functional vehicle is still a vehicle, a tank is a vehicle, and it still counts when it's part of a monument would have been covered by other permitting and planning work anyways.

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