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Rikard's avatar

I'd put it this way, and I'll explain why too:

The shorter, easier and more abbreviated the law is as written, the greater the power of the judge(s) and courts but - very important - cultural factors such as praxis, tradition and religion. The Mosaic law being a very good example; compared to modern law it's virtually a pamphlet. Another good example is Nordic Iron Age law, which was preserved from oral tradition by being written down between 1100s-1400s (Sweden). It deals almost exclusively with practical matters and is so bare-bones it is positively Lakonik in style, which to me suggests it was so well-known and established as an integral cultural expression that very few words were needed.

(The best example from that time, is the Gutalagen, the law of Gotland. It is purely Viking Era, with an opening stanza or paragraph about switching the old gods for Jesus tacked-on.)

Since the law was a function of culture rather than a driver of same or a political tool, it didn't need be verbose.

But with larger nations, people merging together over centuries, so too must the law become more abstract and specific at the same time, to avoid bias and judges giving preference to people of their own "tribe".

Then, we also have the notion of "if action X is not explicitly and exactly described as forbidden, it's permitted", a notion which in my experience emerges in the 1700s in UK and the emergent USA as a logical consequence of the proto-religion of "universal rights" as something actually existing (in contrast to the older notion and concept of earned privilege). This further requires laws to inevitably strive for becoming a 1:1 copy of reality, since the law under such a notion must cover any and all potential eventualities. The older Swedish law on drugs is a perfect example: it listed specific substances. So, change the molecular structure slightly, and the drug is now legal. Patently ridiculous of course, but liberals/libertarians succesfully conjured the ghost of "arbitrariness" to hamper any efforts to get a logical and rational law on drug abuse into place.

Now, to where my claimed knowledge and insight into this comes from. Not studying legal history, nor law, but games. How to put a set of rules for a game together, to get the desired style, flow and pace of game play. Given that gamers are supremely creative and see rules and how to dodge, evade and avoid and exploit the rules as a game in its own right, I'd even go so far as to argue rules design is equal to or above lawmaking in complexity.

The difference is the consequences of failure, of course. A bad game will tank, unless amended quickly enough. A bad law can tank an entire society and is never quick in fixing.

Further, for a games designer the role of benevolent dictator really is benevolent; there's no way of forcing customers to buy/play the game. Lots of behavioural psychology-tricks, but ultimately there's no force behind it. In gaming - especially tabletop/board games which is the niche I inhabited - we work with the twin concepts of RAW and RAI, oft written as RAW vs RAI.

Rules As Written vs Rules As Intended. I could give specific examples, but I've been verbose enough already.

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Joshua Jericho Ramos Levine's avatar

Many lawyers in the US have the charter of the Savannah settlement in their office, it says something like “no liquor, no lawyers, no Catholics” allowed and a couple other things. That was (supposedly) all the laws that colony needed.

Yeah not only the “magic spell” aspect and making phrases needlessly complicated, but also all of the preambles and announcements that come before and after laws—certainly ritualistic language designed to benefit the in-group who has a monopoly on this process.

As a side note, as a paralegal and debt collector in the US, I found that about half of lawyers had high overall intelligence, but half seemed to only have verbal and social intelligence (like politicians, salesmen, and actors often have) but not have any math skills. I mean there were some who had no general concept of what interest rates are, or how to add two small numbers together without a calculator. These people seemed to bluster and boast more, and would need to rely on special language to keep their high position , as they don’t have other skills to offer. Versus the ones who piloted their own planes, owned a hobby farm, or did accounting and computer programming on the side always seemed to communicate a lot more clearly to me.

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