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Law Documents in a Nutshell
Ramakrishnan M writes "LawMeme has a two part article (more to come) on reading and interpreting Legalese for geeks, titled "Law School in a nutshell". Here is the Part 1 and part 2"
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However, I do plan on going to school for law, combat DRM, Pallidum, ect. Article has a lot of good information in it, even if you don't plan on being a lawyer.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I think I'm alergic to legalese or something. Even looking at the dumbed down version is making me sick.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Comon, does anyone think anyone who doesn't know this stuff and still posts bullshit in yro sections is going to read this? It'd be good if they did, but most people want to continue blasting and flaming away while remaining in ignorance of both the subject matter and their pathetic lies.
Unlike 99% of the crap you'll read here, I AM a lawyer, however, this article has a lot of good information in it, even if you don't plan on being a lawyer.
LawMeme gets sued by O'Reilly for use of word 'nutshell'. Trademark Lawsuit....
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Clearly this was a collaborative effort of Dan Gookin, original author of DOS and C "for Dummies," and Mr. Rogers, of the Mr. Rogers fame. You think a 15-year old posing as a lawyer is odd? How about 6 year old dummies (the logical mixture of the two audiences)?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Also, 43% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
VI RULES!
That should do. *runs for cover*
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Subject says it all.
On Citations...
XXX U.S. XXXX (19XX): That's the official citation of a case. Often, if you go into a library, you won't find an official reporter (and you probably wouldn't want the official reporter, anyway). Lexis and West Publishing put out what are called unofficial reporters, the Lawyer's Edition (L.Ed.) and....I can't remember the other one at the moment IIRC (Supreme Court Reports). These have all sorts of annotations that lead you to other important info regarding the case, or cases cited within the decision. Sometimes in the decision itself, if you're not familiar with a case that's cited by the writer, you won't understand the argument. Some judges are especially obtuse (think writing code without good comments).
The Brief:
Here's the thing....the brief is far from the full story when considering a case. The brief puts one side's best spin on the case. It's designed to be persuasive, as well as being informative. Both sides submit them, blah blah blah. But, especially in cases before the Supreme Court, other factors come into play. A well-written amicus brief can have quite a bit of influence; even if the two parties involved do not solicit it, nor endorse it.
After the all the briefs are submitted, the justices hear oral arguments, where they're free to clarify things that don't make sense.
In a sense, the briefs discussed in this article are Release Notes on the case....they make the argument, but don't tell the full story.
Or 'idem' and 'id' are both short for ibidem.
But like I said IANAL, I just took a few years of latin...
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
The first few paragraphs have me reeled in... this is really scary - it totally makes sense! I truly am a geek. Well there are worse things... I could be a lawyer!
I find that when dechipering legalese, it always pays to have a cup of nice, hot, warm pepper jack cheese.
A circle-snot is a Taco-snotting circle-jerk, another practice common among the Slashdot crew.
To understand why legalese is so incomprehensible, think about it as the programming language Legal. It may have been clean and simple once, but that was before it suffered from a thousand years of feature creep and cut-and-paste coding. Sure, Legal is filled with bizzare keywords, strange syntax, and hideous redundancy, but what large piece of software isn't? Underneath the layers of cruft, serious work is taking place.
A reputable lawyer does not get involved with this shit - slashdot is a cesspool (I read it for entertainment purposes only - my guess is that high technical aptitude of the users is about 5% majority). Nice try though, lawyertroll.
"Anything that can be put into a nutshell deserves to stay there"
I appreciate the attempt to inform, but it seems to me this falls into the category of "a little bit of knowledge is dangerous". The pages bill themselves as "3 years of law school in a nutshell", as if you'd get a quick overview of relevant law for geeks. However, it is an analysis of one particular court filing, and based on my 15+ years dealing with legal docs and lawyers (as a techie, IASNAL), I didn't find a scrap of it relevant to software licensing, employment contracts, stock option agreements, or confidentiality agreements. You may find it entertaining, but it's not going to help you deal with the legal issues that you come across in the real world.
With all of the legal Ask Slashdot questions, why don't more lawyers advertise on Slashdot?
>Pages iii-v: ableofcontents
...but this article can.
>Not even lawyers can mess up a table of contents.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
I was wondering if we could get a Law School Chicks for Geeks book too... They're really cute, but I don't know how to ask one on a date without getting sued.
The more people who think they know the law but are unaware of its subtleties and precedants make for a less intelligent exchange of ideas and more "I know what I'm talking about, listen to me, not them" type of exchanges.
I know this for two reasons: I come from a family of lawyers and legal experts, and I tend to fall into the "I'm correct, damnit!" category I just mentioned. Therefore, I'm usually shot down by the legal minds in my family, even when I'm being particularly intelligent in my own right, or *cough* quoting a piece of "+5 Insightful" legal advice gleaned from slashdot.
There is no substitute for a real legal education and pursuing real-world applications (be you a judge, law professor, trial lawyer or law clerk). I guess what I'm really attempting to say is that thinking you know something is no replacement for actually knowing that thing. Not that having a law degree makes you eligable to offer legal advice (I wouldn't ask an IP lawyer for help with closing on a house), but it does place you in better standing.
Use this article to help you better understand the legal document you are reading, do NOT use it to further legal advice to others -- that is not what this article, or any other like it, is meant for.
</rant>
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Looks like with all our ranting, critisizing and arguing, we managed to irritate some lawyers into trying to set us straight.
I think we should all give ourselves a pat on the back, because it is obvious that these guys were reading lots of slashdot before they wrote those articles.
Honestly, I didn't bother reading most of it... a self respecting geek doesn't have time to read loads of bullshit such as above. Honestly, I started to fall asleep after reading about the case numbers, etcetera, etcetera.
Keep up the good work!
www.goat.cx
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
"I'll take patent law for 500, Alex"
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand / your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying"
Ha! Are you a programmer? Do you know such
prominient computer language as Eiffel?
BTW, here is a good page reviewing languages:
here
A lot of useful and robust programs were written on that language;this strange language enforces
simple "for" loop as follows: you should write preconditions for loop, postconditions for loop, invariant of the loop and the loop itself.
I saw good and robust software written on such strange language - it worked.
Legal is like Eiffel...
Haynes books have been banned because too many people were deluded into thinking they understoods mechanics' lingo, Home Depot has been shut down to avoid furthering the delusions of millions of do-it-yourselfers, The Motley Fool has been served with cease and desist papers, O'Reilly, Wrox, and many many other publishers have been hit with restraining orders, can millions of cat and dog owners have been served with restraining orders prohibiting them from coming closer than 100 yards to pet stores.
Infuriate left and right
Beyond all law, beyond all legal precedent, beyond all unbiased opinion however, is the one true cardinal law - that all judgements ultimately come down to a judge, a panel of judges, or a jury, who lay down a verdict as they see fit. They must rationalize and have good reasoning for their decision, but time and time again lawyers after a case scratch their head and say "Wow, I can't believe I lost (or won) that case!"
It's for this reason that you can always TRY to sue, no matter how silly the claim, because you just might win, even if the laws of the past seem against you.
What we really need is a tutorial on GeekSpeak for lawyers. That would teach them things like:
I enjoyed the article, but I dislike the fact that this tends to enforce the idea that code==law.
Code isn't law. Protocols are like law. Code that follows (or breaks) the protocols is not law, but more like agents under the law. Saying that code==law is like saying that drivers are the motor vehicle code.
Now, certainly it should be illegal to misrepresent code as being compliant to a protocol when it isn't (e.g., MSFT Kerberos). However, the code itself shouldn't be illegal--only the misrepresentation.
The distinction is important, because certain Free Software zealots are trying to use the code==law argument to convince people that software should be Public (they like to say Free when what they really mean is Public, like the Public School System), and perhaps even that private software should be outlawed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think they do not really care.
...
They make "phat l3wt5" regardless.
A solid 10 year plan:
1) become lawyer
2)
3) $$$
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
This little digression appears on the second page of the article:
:)
"Documents lawyers write for their "friends" (i.e., their clients, lawyers on their side, judges, etc.) are very different from documents lawyers write for their "enemies" (lawyers on the other side and the public at large"
Kinda makes you wonder whether the public is a "friend" of the congress or not, doesn't it?
The moderation totals for the parent comment are (at the time of my posting): Moderation Totals: Troll=1, Total=1.
:-) )
Uhh... I'm not entirely sure how to read that, but I choose to believe that it means that this comment started out at 2 and got knocked down to 1 Troll.
Why? What's the point of modding down? It should be obvious the poster is playing out the ancient vi vs. \non_vi_editor/(1) *for fun*.
I bet the moderater doesn't even know what the heck the poster's talking about when he says, "Quirk's Exception to Godwin's Law applies here." Of course, I don't either! But I'm not gonna go modding down things I don't understand.(2)
Footnote 1: It's supposed to be "vi vs EMACS", but since vi is so weird, I think a person could argue vi vs. just about any other editor. (For the record, I don't really care for vi or EMACS too much. Although, I suppose I may one day familiarize myself with vim.)
Footnote 2: It's sort of like what Tegan said to the Master: "This'll teach you not to meddle in things you don't understand!" And, of course, that is just one example of the more general sci-fi principle summed up so eloquently by Joel Robinson when he says of some random mad scientist: "He tampered in God's domain." And, of course, all this goes back to the Tower of Babel and/or the Tower Struck By Lightning tarrot card.
(oh btw, one last thing--today I found out that the commercial for Millyways ("If *you've* done six impossible things this morning...") is very similar to something the white queen says in "Alice In Wonderland" (warning, quote may not be exact): "I've found that, with practice, I can believe at least six impossible things before breakfast." It's a happy day.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
But what animal should be on the cover of O'Reilly's "Law In A Nutshell" ? A shark ?
Seneca College's Faculty of Continuing Education offers a terrific course. It's meant as an elective, but anyone can take the course even if they're not pursuing a diploma. It gives you a great overview of the Canadian legal system, and it's taught by a lawyer who obviously loves the law and its practice, and is very enthusiastic.
I'd recommend the course for anyone living in Toronto.
The course is _Law and the Citizen_, CAN271.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
I disagree with the tone of that comment for two reasons:
1. If a legal system, like a religion or a tax code, is so complex that only the high priests can understand it, then it is too complex. Simple rules are more likely to be read, understood, remembered, followed, and enforced, and at a lower cost. Our legal system is now a self-contradictory monster that frequently violates rights instead of enforcing them.
2. Despite their extensive educations, lawyers, like doctors and other arrogant initiates of the divine mysteries, frequently have significant holes in their understanding of the foundations of their discipline. I have recently been arguing with a lawyer friend at the International Criminal Court in The Hague about human rights, and it is clear that her understanding of the theoretical basis of why they are trying Milosevic & Co is less than complete. Sex tip for geeks: arguing such topics is *not* a good way to seduce a woman.
By far - the most important thing for geeks to know about the law is: that the law is not something that geeks understand; the law is something that geeks think they understand.
What I mean by that is this: if technical people agree on a set of rules or protocols - that is the way things are - virtually without exception. If a program fails to abide by a protocol - it generally won't work.
The law looks similar and so we think we understand what is going on; we are wrong.
The law is nothing of the kind; the law is quite literally what ever a clever lawyer can talk a judge or jury into believing at that given moment. As such it has a malleable quality quite unacceptable to anyone who has the ability to think honestly.
Imagine the chaos that would rule in the technical world if clueless pointy hair bosses controlled - from minute to minute - based purely on whim - what protocols meant. That is an accurate description of the situation in the legal world.
The law is a system constructed by weasel brains for the benefit of weasel brains and nothing else. Of course the weasel brains realize that if the thinkers ever catch on to what is happening to them - that the game is over. Because of that the weasels go to great lengths to insure that no one who is honest and intelligent ever looks too closely and critically at the basic design and structure of the law. The law is designed so that if the technically sharp study it that they will be so surrounded by trees that they will never notice the shape of the forrest.
If this causes you realize that the law is, in fact,nothing but a gigantic fraud of the first magnitude - then you have begun to understand what is going on in the world.
The law - a real time operating system for life critical functions - consisting of billions of lines of code - not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.
Just keep your extended brain operational.
This programming system is developed by army of developers, none of whom cared about the overall system as long as they could coax it into giving them the results that they wanted.
:-)
And the last major attempt at housecleaning took place a few centuries ago, and required a war.
Oh right. In the 1930's there was a serious attempt at refactoring that never got finished. See what they made of To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
I would suggest being aware of this, because the Commerce Clause is the single most potent grant of authority to Congress. And the CBDTPA is seeking to apply it on the behalf of copyright monopolists. Be aware that what cannot be justified under copyright might well be a walk in the park under Commerce.
Spaghetti doesn't even begin to describe it.
Mandatory disclaimer. IANAL, and this is not legal advice.
In case you are curious, the reason why people put in disclaimers like that is that if you give bad legal advice, you are liable for the consequences. Doubly so if you were practicing law without a license. In fact lawyers who give correct legal advice may still be liable if the person they gave it to misunderstood the advice. Since in a public forum like this, misunderstandings are virtually guaranteed, it is a stupid person with any aquaintance with the law who does not put in said disclaimer.
Um, how did that nonsense get modded up? I'd have assumed it was a troll, but if not...
Perhaps the "code is law" comparison came from the phrase "legal code" or similar? Perhaps it's a metaphor rather than a direct equivalency? Perhaps the article was extending that metaphor in a light-hearted way while making an entirely unrelated point, rather than trying to argue the finer points of what Grand Meaning the metaphor contains?
And no, Free Software is nothing like Public Schools. The "Public" in the public school system means in effect "state-run". None of the Free-Software "zealots" I've met are advocating an exclusively state-run system of software development. In fact the "proprietary" side is much closer to being state-supported. Would you argue that Esso is in the public sector because the details of how their major product works are disclosed to the public, and people are free to re-create it on their own? As opposed to a private sector company like KFC, whose recipe is secret...
Having done my time in law school, the articles remind me of a synopsis of a 1 hour, first year class in "Legal Research & Writing." And watered down at that. That stuff is not brain surgery. Any geek reading a legal brief would immediately see the structure to it and that it is d*mned redundant. What the geek wouldn't know is the weight of the precedential cases cited in support of the brief. The author(s) seem to think that citing a "ton" of cases is influential. But that is not how it works. It is the "precedential weight" of the cases cited that is important. And if the cases cited are not on point and precedential, the court will look askance at your argument from the get go.
My guess the articles are meant to fulfill a first year law school writing exercise.
1. The article is right-on as far as the law being a system not unlike a computer (although there are human foibles and biases built in on many levels). As my former .sig says, Laws are ROMS, courts are CPUs.
2. Going to law school is a shitty career move, at least money-wise, for a computer geek. Aside from the three years of negative income, big law firms won't hire you unless you go to Harvard or some "top 25" law school and/or your grades are good enough to get on law review. Your IT skills are mostly irrelevant to the law job market. If you have an engineering degree you might possibly be able to get into patent law. If you enter private practice, you will discover that....
3. Computer geeks make crappy law clients. They already think they know everything. They are far happier as pro pers (people who try to represent themselves in court as their own lawyers).
4. IT pays better and you don't have to deal with shit from clients, some of whom will lose in court because they deserve to, and will then be pissed at you and file bogus bar complaints and malpractice suits. Did you rent Cape Fear?
5. Some clients are insane (see (3)).
NOLO Press ("Please Don't Feed The Lawyers") needs to be mentioned here. Not only to they publish some really great legal books for non-lawyes, but they also have several "Plain English Law Centers", including a legal encyclopedia, dictionary, FAQ, and so on.
:)
I'm not affiliated with NOLO, except for the fact that I'm a very satisfied customer. I've started and run a couple of small technology businesses, and dealt with a fair amount of IP (both patent and trademark) and contract law issues, and NOLO books are great for educating yourself about what the real legal issues are, and when you really need to get an attorney involved.
-Mark
(IANAL, but my wife is -- and she approves of NOLO
"eye-anal"?
Perhaps the "code is law" comparison came from the phrase "legal code" or similar? Perhaps it's a metaphor rather than a direct equivalency? Perhaps the article was extending that metaphor in a light-hearted way while making an entirely unrelated point, rather than trying to argue the finer points of what Grand Meaning the metaphor contains?
I understand this point of view, and this is probably how most people see it. "legal code" is indeed very much like "software code". Unfortunately, there is a lot of manipulative rhetoric associated with the Public vs. Private debate in software. For example, people making a big fuss over how "software piracy" is not the same as killing a crew and taking a ship. Some even go so far as to call piracy "sharing". So... when I see a phrase like "code is law" being repeated like a mantra around the internet, I tend to look for ulterior motives. In other words, there are a lot of semantic games being played by advocates. If you haven't been following the game, it may not make any sense.
And no, Free Software is nothing like Public Schools
The Free Software movement is very much like the movement for Public Education--in its early years. Remember, the FSF was started in what... 1984? It's arguable that prior to the establishment of the FSF the Free Software movement didn't exist. Yes of course there was open source software before that, just as there were probably free schools before the Public Education movement. Compared to Public Education, Free Software is just a baby.
Compare this history of the Public School system written by Blacks with an axe to grind and this less colorful history of the Public Education movement.
Now, compare both histories to the nascent Free Software movement. We already have some interesting parallels. First, we have idealists and visionairies that organize and characterize the early movements. Next, we have inputs from businesses. For the Public Schools, it's factory owners. For Free Software it's RedHat and IBM. The next step in Free Education was getting the taxpayer to pay for it, and establishing an accepted source of revenue (property taxes)--that made it Public Education. The Free Software movement is just beginning that phase. Government funding for Free Software is mostly stealth and/or ad hoc.
What I am projecting (and would like to see us avoid) is a situation where the Public is compelled to use software that is taxpayer funded and/or regulated.
None of the Free-Software "zealots" I've met are advocating an exclusively state-run system of software development
Of course not. They know nobody would accept that now. Instead, they are advocating things like a "preference" for GPL software on government-owned computers. That's just a stepping stone towards what they really want, which is a state-controlled software industry.
In fact the "proprietary" side is much closer to being state-supported
This argument only makes sense if you don't believe in IP rights. At this point, many people jump up and argue that IP was never recognized as a right when the constitution was framed. Well, liberty for Negroes and suffrage for women weren't recognized rights either. Morals have changed. So, the proprietary companies are no more state supported than any other citizen that enjoys police protection for their property.
Would you argue that Esso is in the public sector because the details of how their major product works are disclosed to the public, and people are free to re-create it on their own? As opposed to a private sector company like KFC, whose recipe is secret...
I would argue that the degree to which either business depends on IP is irrelevant in determining to what extent they are in the public sector. Relevant issues are whether or not they receive special tax breaks and subsidies, and to what extent they are regulated.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?