[jacques_chester]

Again, I must insist that folk can only take this view because they have not studied law.

Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler.

The complexity of law is emergent from the problem domain. It doesn't require a conspiracy against the public to be that way. It merely requires the existence of a sufficiently large and diverse public.

[shabble]

> Law's complexity is not by design. Much of case law and legislation is about refactoring existing principles into something simpler.

Although it seems like there is also the accretion of "legalistic debt" (c.f. technical debt) when changes are made in response to (the perception of) urgent, high-profile problems.

It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existing laws than it is to write a new, much simpler version that would cover all the same ground, get it passed, and repeal the older version.

I'm also curious about what effect changes to a particular law have on precedent based on an interpretation of an older version.

[jacques_chester]

There's a certain amount of legislation which is of the be-seen-to-be-doing-something variety. But that too gets reformed now and then. Lots of legislators are ex-lawyers, they hanker to tidy the place up inbetween shitting on everyone.

> It seems that, much like software, it's a lot easier to add clauses to, or make minor changes to existing laws than it is to write a new, much simpler version that would cover all the same ground, get it passed, and repeal the older version.

Like software, it's easy to underestimate the complexity of the existing system and to overestimate the advantages of a single, sharp cutover.

The current system is not perfect, but it largely works by groping towards better solutions over time. Legal systems where the official concept of law is "we designed it ab initio with Pure Reason (tm)" tend to be just as riddled with contradiction and complexity. They just lie to themselves about it.

> I'm also curious about what effect changes to a particular law have on precedent based on an interpretation of an older version.

Most of the time it is very easy to make the connection. Either it's new legislation, in which case the legislature will amend the clauses that a court has interpreted differently from what they considered to be the intent. Or it's case law, for which every precedent is named and referenced. You can trace every legal principle back to its first expression.