# Would you like a goverment that enforced the spirit.... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 27, 2009, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213 "2009-01-27T12:17:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/21 "2009-01-27T16:55:38Z")
> [@pedescribe](#): > > So let me get this straight: You want the same people who are enforcing the law and its punishments to interpret the laws? > > “While it was an unfortunate incident, I rule that the lynch mob had been sufficiently provoked, and we’ll just let those murder charges slide.” Actually, my brother was telling me after he started working as a police officer, the only arrests he was bound by law to make was for outstanding warrents. He could technically let a murder off with a warning. However in reality that doesn’t really happen. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/22 "2009-01-27T17:59:58Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > One example of where I’d see this appropriate is **Ender** ’s hypothetical case of Grampaw riding slowly down the park trail in his motorized wheelchair. Another, more closely related to **SHAKES** ’s original example, is this: In the State of Hypothetical Examples, the “Romeo and Juliet clause” says two years’ age difference. The local DA, fighting a tough reelection campaign, has vowed to “get tough on sexual predators.” A naive virginal college freshman boy, who turned 18 in August, meets a sweet young thing at a teen club shortly after he starts college in September, and, finding her not only receptive but aggressive and physically quite mature, loses his virginity to her. They are, however, caught by the local police _in flagrante delicto_, and some information about the sweet young thing comes out. It turns out that she has had sex with a dozen boys who frequent the club, and her mother has turned a blind eye to her sex life, in fact putting her on the Pill. She will, however, celebrate her sixteenth birthday a few days before Hallowe’en. By the law, this is a case of statutory rape, and the DA intends to push it to bolster his image as a “get tough on crime” prosecutor. I would think, however, that while the boy did not use the best judgment in the world, convicting him on the full charges of which he is manifestly guilty by a strict reading of the law would be seen by most people as an injustice. Unfortunately, and will an actual lawyer correct me if I’m off base here, wouldn’t rape shield laws (I think that’s what they’re called–the laws that don’t allow the victim’s past sexual history to be brought up in court as a defense against a rape accusation) come into play here, making the hypothetical case look infinitely more black and white and virtually assuring the boy gets the book thrown at him? Don’t get me wrong, those laws are a good thing and I remember what it was like before them and would never go back, but in this case it seems to me that a well intentioned law would be standing in the way of actual justice. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/23 "2009-01-27T18:30:48Z")
> [@SHAKES](#): > > Are you guys telling me that you don’t think a jury of 12 of your peers, after hearing a case; could come to a fair, benevolent ruling? > > Doesn’t that show a great lack of faith in humanity? I don’t want to appear elitist or anything like that, but it’s a simple matter of fact that most likely, any given jury does not, as a whole, have much training in rhetoric and recognising fallacious argumentation, which leaves them rather open to manipulation by better trained individuals, i.e. lawyers – a good lawyer, I’m pretty sure, can make the average jury believe and/or doubt pretty much anything – just look at some of the things people will believe even without being prompted (actually, I’ve always had some general criticism for the jury system based on this, but it would be beyond the scope of this thread to go further into that). So I think imposing some limits on their freedom of decision is only reasonable, and necessary for consistent law enforcement. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/24 "2009-01-27T18:41:47Z")
> [@Enderw24](#): > > OK, so your local park has been having problems with teenage mopeders blazing through the trails and causing havok. Your city council decides enough is enough and enacts a law to counteract it: “no vehicles in the park.” > Problem solved! No more mopeds. > But now park rangers, trying to enforce the law, start ticketing bicyclists. Police start to ticket cars in the park’s parking lot. This can’t be right, can it? Surely the police can see what the intent of the law was. But…there’s intent and there’s what’s written. It’s not the police’s job to interpret. They enforce. > > So the city council goes back to the drawing board. “No motorized vehicles allowed on park trails.” > Then one day Officer Literal comes upon a grandfather in a motorized wheelchair and writes him up a citation. The city goes crazy and the SDMB has a field day pitting the officer, but the city council sees that maybe the law should be changed again. > > “No two wheeled motorized vehicles used for recreational purposes allowed in the park.” > These teenage hooligans, seeing that the moped can’t be ridden around anymore, switch over to three wheeled motorized trikes. Crap! > > “No motorized vehicles used for recreational purposes allowed on the park trails.” > Offroading suddenly became a lot more fun. And hey, the parking lot’s still fair game. > > This is one example. One very simple example. Imagine it across the entire spectrum of laws. I want you to understand that writing laws well takes a lot of effort and a lot of brainstorming on different possibilities across a spectrum of potential human behavior and even when done correctly will only have a 95% accuracy to it. > The founding fathers were really really good at writing laws and yet every single portion of the Constitution (ok, save for Amendment 3) have been argued upon in a court of law. What does the law say? What does it REALLY say? What did the founding fathers mean? Should we accept a rationale based upon what they meant when it cannot be conclusively proven or do we go with what’s written? > > There will ALWAYS be situations where a conflict arises between what the legislative body intended and what was written. What do we choose? The law or the rationale? The law is black and white, written down for all to see. The intent is nebulous. We have to research what was going on that spurred on the law, the debates on the Senate floor, the committee notes, and more. > > Our legal system is the worst there is…except for everyone else’s. As a professional motorized trike salesman, I think this post is spot-on. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/25 "2009-01-27T18:48:51Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > What if it were _your_ 12-year-old daughter, still in rubber “Hello Kitty” pants and gnawing a pacifier, dating that shifty 14-year-old punk with the Fu Manchu and the flame-muraled van with a mattress in the back? Eh? What say you _then_, you free-thinking modern parent, you? 14-year-olds own vans now? ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/26 "2009-01-27T19:05:31Z")
> [@SHAKES](#): > > Are you guys telling me that you don’t think a jury of 12 of your peers, after hearing a case; could come to a fair, benevolent ruling? > > Doesn’t that show a great lack of faith in humanity? No, not at all, and I’ll tell you why. As background: My husband loves the idea of law. Even though he majored in computer science, he always took poli-sci major-oriented government and history classes as electives, he reads about it, etc. So, when he got called up for jury duty a couple of years ago, he was kind of excited about getting to be involved in the justice system. He ended up on a robbery case with a jury that completely ignored the overwhelming evidence against the guy, completely bought the defense’s case that the local police force was “conspiring” against the guy, despite a complete lack of evidence, and discussed their astrological signs and what it meant that they were all on the jury while my husband worked to convince them to at least convict him on one of the minor charges (they weren’t budging on anything else). He was completely disillusioned and says he’ll tell them anything to avoid jury duty again. I still feel terrible for him about that; I’ve rarely seen him that disheartened about anything. And you think these yahoos should be _interpreting_ the laws, too? I think you don’t get out enough and maybe don’t realize what utter idiots people are. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/27 "2009-01-27T19:41:12Z")
> [@SHAKES](#): > > ..What is wrong with being jugded by a jury of your peers on the animus of the law and not the letter of it? Forbidding courts from doing so is one of the first thing that was done in France after the revolution. There was a saying at the time that went like “May God protect us from the equity of courts” (Dieu nous preserve de l’équité des parlements). Courts were previously allowed to rule “in equity”, that is to set apart a law in a particular case if its enforcement would have resulted in an obviously unjust ruling, assumed not to be intended by the legislator. The obvious problem was that different courts or judges might have vastly different opinions about what the spirit of the law is and about what is just or unjust. The net result being that court rulings were unpredictable and inconsistent, as law and precedents might or might not be discarded, at the court’s whim. Also, it might not always work out the way you would expect, especially for sensitive and hotly debated issues. Actually, you’d never know how it is going work out. This ball should be in the camp of the legislator and of the prosecution, not the courts ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/28 "2009-01-27T19:57:22Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > I’m not expressing agreement or disagreement with the OP, but I think you’re a bit off here. The law should have stepped in and prevented a 12 and 14 year old from saying they’re dating? Come on! > > I had a ‘girlfriend’ when I was in sixth grade. We were both in the same grade, though for much of that we were of ‘different’ ages (12 and 13). We kind of kissed once or twice (pretty innocuous kisses). After a month or so we stopped being boyfriend and girlfriend. > > I also held hands and kissed (almost with tongue, but not really, just kind of open-mouthed) a girl who was in 8th grade when I was in 7th grade at a dance or two. > > The law should have stopped all that because it’s somehow wrong because we were of different ages? I believe I said the law, a parent, or someone should have stopped that relationship. You may have a different opinion and that’s your right but to me a 14 year old boy and a 12 year old girl is just flat wrong. When I was fourteen, I had my own car while twelve year old girls were still more or less playing with dolls experimenting with make up. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/29 "2009-01-27T20:02:16Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > I believe I said the law, a parent, or someone should have stopped that relationship. You may have a different opinion and that’s your right but to me a 14 year old boy and a 12 year old girl is just flat wrong. When I was fourteen, I had my own car while twelve year old girls were still more or less playing with dolls experimenting with make up. A pretty good example of why the OP, if the courts were allowed to rule according to their wisdom, could see some results he didn’t expect. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/30 "2009-01-27T20:07:33Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > In your example, I’m assuming the 18 year old is a male since you refer to the 16 year old as “his GF of say 4 years.” So you are placing a 14 year old male in the position of having a 12 year old girlfriend? If that is so, the law or a parent or someone should have put a stop to it then and there. > > I might reconsider my example if I were you but YMMV. OK, I haven’t read this entire thread yet; but I wanted to point out the absurdity of your post. Just because they’ve been boyfriend and girlfriend for four years, doesn’t mean they had sex on their first date. I think point being made (and I think it’s it’s still a bad point, by the way) is that they’ve had a relationship for a long time. Based on the length of their relationship would it necessarily be a bad thing that they had sex, even if it was the first time? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/31 "2009-01-27T20:08:23Z")
Legalism in any form (going by the letter) is a horrible way to live, leads to ridicules things like 9 warning stickers on a ladder, adds much expense to products and services, and really restricts humanity to each and every move you make must be assumed ‘reasonable action’ or else you are at fault, though it is not reasonable for humans to act totally reasonable 100% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/32 "2009-01-27T21:05:50Z")
I don’t think the judicial system is blind to the spirit of the law. This is even allowed for in the letter of it by giving judges and juries a range of possible sentences for various crimes and discretion in sentencing. It also allows certain charges to be dropped/dismissed even when the accused is guilty of them in order to plead to a lesser charge (plea bargaining). It’s pretty routine really. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/33 "2009-01-27T21:45:01Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > Unfortunately, and will an actual lawyer correct me if I’m off base here, wouldn’t rape shield laws (I think that’s what they’re called–the laws that don’t allow the victim’s past sexual history to be brought up in court as a defense against a rape accusation) come into play here, making the hypothetical case look infinitely more black and white and virtually assuring the boy gets the book thrown at him? Don’t get me wrong, those laws are a good thing and I remember what it was like before them and would never go back, but in this case it seems to me that a well intentioned law would be standing in the way of actual justice. Do rape shield laws come into affect for purely statutory rape such as the example? Could the defense call on the victim as a cooperative witness? She could establish that she did not tell the suspect her age and that she was the aggressor. If she does this voluntarily, I do not think the rape shield laws would come into play. Jonathan ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/34 "2009-01-27T22:14:43Z")
> [@SHAKES](#): > > OK, I just realized I started this thread in the pit. I meant for it to be in IMHO. :smack: > > Mods if ya want to move it for me, that would be great. Unless of course somebody wants to yell at me for starting this thread. 😃 Sure, no problem. Moving from the Pit to IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/35 "2009-01-27T22:14:50Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > As a professional motorized trike salesman, I think this post is spot-on. Huh. Well, that explains SO MUCH. “Tax lawyer” – _psshhh_. And to think I believed him. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/36 "2009-01-27T22:26:51Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > Do rape shield laws come into affect for purely statutory rape such as the example? Could the defense call on the victim as a cooperative witness? She could establish that she did not tell the suspect her age and that she was the aggressor. If she does this voluntarily, I do not think the rape shield laws would come into play. > > Jonathan See now, I don’t really know–but I have seen statutory rape laws get crazy ridiculous in some jurisdictions. For example, back in the mid '70s I married at sixteen while already pregnant. It was legal in California with parental consent at the time. My ex-husband was nineteen. Nowadays my understanding is that in California it’s still legal to marry when under eighteen, at least according to [this site](http://law.jrank.org/pages/11840/Marriage-Age-Requirements.html). According to the same site, if I were in the same situation today in Oregon where I currently live I wouldn’t be allowed to marry under any circumstance until I turned seventeen. Now as I understand statutory rape laws, they’re predicated on the person under the age of majority being unable to consent to sex. In most states parents can give consent for their minor child to marry, which one assumes means they will indeed be having sex. However, if the minor is sexually active but unmarried, parental consent doesn’t have any force and a prosecutor can unilaterally decide, even if both parties and their parents disagree, to prosecute the statutory rape charge independent of the choices of the actual principals involved. So this isn’t quite the same thing as the rape shield laws, but has the same effect. Even if that fifteen year old were an experienced hooker with an incredibly sincere fake ID who was a hostile witness against her virginal paramour (let’s make it even more fun and assume the boy met her at a church social and was totally unaware of her night job) it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference–if the DA was gung-ho to pursue the case it would be pursued and a jury would be required to convict because the bare facts of the case–eighteen year old dick goes into fifteen year old pussy–insist that a crime has been committed. Statutory rape laws are one area where a gigantic amount of common sense and reform needs to be applied. According to these laws, had they been extant when I was a teenager, my children could have been made bastards, their father a convicted felon and registered sex offender, our family would never have had a chance to prosper–and for what? To “protect” a sexually active girl who’d been doing the nasty all on her own since fifteen, even though she neither needed nor wanted such “protection?” I’d say the cure was infinitely worse than the disease. It seems to me that most statutory rape convictions are much more about making vindictive parents and gung-ho, “tough on crime” prosecutors happy than by shielding the vulnerable from exploitation. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2009, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/37 "2009-01-28T00:11:47Z")
> [@Enright3](#): > > OK, I haven’t read this entire thread yet; but I wanted to point out the absurdity of your post. Just because they’ve been boyfriend and girlfriend for four years, doesn’t mean they had sex on their first date. I think point being made (and I think it’s it’s still a bad point, by the way) is that they’ve had a relationship for a long time. Based on the length of their relationship would it necessarily be a bad thing that they had sex, even if it was the first time? I don’t care if they waited until he was eighteen and she was sixteen to have sex; what I do believe and will continue to believe is that a fourteen year old boy had no business being involved with a twelve year old girl in sort of dating and/or romantic or going steady arrangement. That’s all; that’s my opinion; YMMV. I would wonder quite seriously if the fourteen year old boy was unable, for whatever reason, to be interested or to have an interest in a girl nearer his own age. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2009, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/38 "2009-01-28T00:49:02Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > I don’t think the judicial system is blind to the spirit of the law. This is even allowed for in the letter of it by giving judges and juries a range of possible sentences for various crimes and discretion in sentencing. It also allows certain charges to be dropped/dismissed even when the accused is guilty of them in order to plead to a lesser charge (plea bargaining). It’s pretty routine really. That’s why so many laws include wording like …a person knowingly does X… …recklessly does X… …does X with intent to Y… In many (not all, I know) cases, no mens rea = not guilty. ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/39 "2009-01-28T03:12:05Z")
I have nothing to add, but this bears repeating. Rubber “Hello Kitty” pants. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2009, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213/40 "2009-01-28T08:29:29Z")
> [@Enderw24](#): > > OK, so your local park has been having problems with teenage mopeders blazing through the trails and causing havok. Your city council decides enough is enough and enacts a law to counteract it: “no vehicles in the park.” > Problem solved! No more mopeds. > But now park rangers, trying to enforce the law, start ticketing bicyclists. Police start to ticket cars in the park’s parking lot. This can’t be right, can it? Surely the police can see what the intent of the law was. But…there’s intent and there’s what’s written. It’s not the police’s job to interpret. They enforce. > > So the city council goes back to the drawing board. “No motorized vehicles allowed on park trails.” > Then one day Officer Literal comes upon a grandfather in a motorized wheelchair and writes him up a citation. The city goes crazy and the SDMB has a field day pitting the officer, but the city council sees that maybe the law should be changed again. > > “No two wheeled motorized vehicles used for recreational purposes allowed in the park.” > These teenage hooligans, seeing that the moped can’t be ridden around anymore, switch over to three wheeled motorized trikes. Crap! > > “No motorized vehicles used for recreational purposes allowed on the park trails.” > Offroading suddenly became a lot more fun. And hey, the parking lot’s still fair game. > > This is one example. One very simple example. Imagine it across the entire spectrum of laws. I want you to understand that writing laws well takes a lot of effort and a lot of brainstorming on different possibilities across a spectrum of potential human behavior and even when done correctly will only have a 95% accuracy to it. > The founding fathers were really really good at writing laws and yet every single portion of the Constitution (ok, save for Amendment 3) have been argued upon in a court of law. What does the law say? What does it REALLY say? What did the founding fathers mean? Should we accept a rationale based upon what they meant when it cannot be conclusively proven or do we go with what’s written? > > There will ALWAYS be situations where a conflict arises between what the legislative body intended and what was written. What do we choose? The law or the rationale? The law is black and white, written down for all to see. The intent is nebulous. We have to research what was going on that spurred on the law, the debates on the Senate floor, the committee notes, and more. > > Our legal system is the worst there is…except for everyone else’s. Those writing the laws are usually not that stupid (I am making no comment as to there wisdom). Usually a law will spell out exactly what the definitions mean. These definitions are part of the code. For example in the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Code (NJSA Title 39) many of the laws will use the term “motor vehicle”. There is a section that has a very specific definition to rule out any confusion like you have above. > [@kidchameleon](#): > > Actually, my brother was telling me after he started working as a police officer, the only arrests he was bound by law to make was for outstanding warrents. He could technically let a murder off with a warning. However in reality that doesn’t really happen. In reality it is not true. Yes there are manditory arrests. Depending on the state the manditory arrests usually include warrants and certain domestic violence crimes. Though it is not listed under manditory arrests you still have an obligation to arrest (or at the very least hold for further investigation) if there is probable casue. Letting a murderer go with a warning would be malfeasance which is a crime. Malfeasance is “the doing of an act which an officer had no legal right to do at all and that when an officer, through ignorance, inattention, or malice, does that which they have no legal right to do at all, or acts without any authority whatsoever, or exceeds, **ignores** , or abuses their powers, they are guilty of malfeasance.” > [@kanicbird](#): > > Legalism in any form (going by the letter) is a horrible way to live, leads to ridicules things like 9 warning stickers on a ladder, adds much expense to products and services, and really restricts humanity to each and every move you make must be assumed ‘reasonable action’ or else you are at fault, though it is not reasonable for humans to act totally reasonable 100% of the time. That is a whole other issue. This has been a discussion of criminal law. Civil law is much different. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-like-a-goverment-that-enforced-the-spirit/483213.md?page=3)