Given how most Americans can't afford a lawyer and how those Americans who can afford a lawyer use said lawyer to abuse the legal system to their gain...
Let's just stop and take a moment and realize how amazing it is that this country has a longstanding public defender system.
Is it perfect? No, of course not. But imagine how fucked we'd be without it.
@freemo C'mon, you're a programmer, you know better. When you make the instructions that simple, you end up with egregious edge cases.
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Complexity != readability. I am ok with it being thurough, the issue is more with it being hard to understand with certainty.
The fact that even a lawyer cant tell you ahead of time with certainty if something is legal or not, you need to find out in court, says a lot
@freemo That's a good point, but it seems like a natural consequence of the necessary complexity. I.e. if you want a self-defense exception to murder laws, then you need to clearly define self-defense. Then you need to figure out when it doesn't apply (i.e. if you're a burglar, are you "defending" yourself from the homeowner?).
The cascading tree of dependencies is where the walls of text come from that are a big component in making laws unreadable.
@LouisIngenthron this is actually a common argument by law scholars and has a name .. i just cant remember what its called right now
@LouisIngenthron It's surprising to me that the public defender system mostly works and doesn't turn into a thing where prosecutors and defenders form an informal agreement to work together.
@LouisIngenthron Its better than not having it. but it hints at a fundementally flawed system. Laws should be understandable by the average p[erson