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by chopin 2053 days ago
>"Disturbing the Peace" is one example off the top of my head of something that's incredibly subjective that we consider the purview of the legal system.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing. Good laws (especially criminal laws) should be normative, i.e. it should be deducible for anyone which behavior is punishable. Laws not adhering to this principle are ripe for selective enforcement and have no place in a rule-of-law society.

1 comments

This is going off on a tangent obviously compared to the OP's point (that the legal system doesn't try to control for subjective behavior, which is incorrect), but sure, I'll indulge.

> That doesn't mean it's a good thing.

I don't think this is a popular position, or even a necessarily logical one. There are a great deal of "I'm not touching you" type behaviors that society collectively despises and often falls under these catch-all categories.

Legal doctrine is rife with "reasonable person" standards as a result that would be impossible to codify thoroughly and properly. Obviously, the mythical "reasonable person" doesn't exist and is often a judge or jury left to subjectively decide.

For example, harassment laws sometimes rely on a "credible threat of violence" based on something that would "make a reasonable person afraid for their safety". Good luck enumerating all the possible definitions of that.