Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jessriedel 1904 days ago
And to be clear: intent definitely can be in the raw text. If the whole text of a statute is trying to outlaw a certain kind of activity but one sentence undermines it all under a literal reading (e.g., by excluding all possible people it might apply to), that sentence will be re-interpretted to what it needs to mean for the law to be applied.