Legal Systems Very Different from Ours | Hacker News Reader

Legal Systems Very Different from Ours

daviddfriedman.com

131 pointsTomte33 comments

People seem to be getting into a tizzy about what 'ours' refers to here.

It refers to common and civil law, the two dominant legal traditions in the world. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#/media/File:Map_of_...

Both arose in Europe, and have been promulgated throughout the world.

These other legal traditions are often highlighted and discussed to show what assumptions the current dominant systems rely upon and what their biases tend to be.

link is broken

file page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Legal_systems_...

direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_t...

People in the USA tend to think that the country has only one set of laws, but in addition to 49 states with generally similar civil and criminal law, we also have Louisiana, with a system of law which descends from the Napoleonic Code, and arbitration agreements found in many contracts and ToSes.

In addition, many religious organizations tend to view their systems of canon law as having primacy before state or federal law, and educational entities which take the same view toward their codes of conduct, preferring to act _in loco parentis_ rather than deferring to state authorities.

This is an old draft. A more recent draft is here: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...

Oh good. Someone told him that “gypsy” is considered a slur by a lot of Romani.

David Friedman is Milton Friedman's son. He teaches law but has never taken a formal law class. He also likes to study the economic systems of MMORPGs. His son Patri came up with the idea of Seasteading. Interesting character.

Among many other things he has written a cookbook with medieval recipes.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/To_Milk_an_Almond.pdf

And an economics book that actually made sense to me: Hidden Order.

I liked his way of defending free trade. „In America there are two ways to make cars. We build them and we grow them. The people in Detroit use steel and build them. And the people in Iowa put corn and wheat on big ships, sail them eastward, and sone time later they come back with cars.“

This is not intended to start a political comment on current use of the term "sharia law". But if you research Hanafi Sunni sharia law in its cultural context, the important thing to grok from a western perspective is that the concept of "sin" and "crime" are essentially the same thing. The two concepts used to be generally the same thing, in western european-derived legal systems 250+ years ago, but are now separated in western legal/justice systems.

Peoples' cultural expectation that something which is a sin must therefore also be a crime helps with the understanding of how it's been implemented up until now.

I’m Greek sin mean error. So sinning is not recommended but it’s not a crime.

How about a chapter on interesting fictional legal systems? My favorite example is Goachin law where the greatest crime is ignorance of the repercussions of your actions. If you’re found innocent you’re judged unworthy of the responsibilities of sentientience and killed. To be found guilty you must prove that truly and deeply understand the ramifications of your actions. The guilty go free. The innocent die.

I recently read China Mieville's "The City and The City", which features two countries - each the size of a large city - that cohabitate the same physical space, but are otherwise entirely different legal entities, with national borders.

I don't want to say too much about it, because slowly learning more about this system and society is one of the fun parts of the book, but you can Google for a brief synopsis of how it works.

Interesting, there's a great video on the governing system of the Iroquois Confederacy, which is surprisingly intricate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4gU2Tsv6hY

Found an error, but in case he doesn't fix it, from:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_sy...

He says:

"The biblical rules, which set twelve and a half as the age of female adulthood"

The Bible is very clear that a male or female become adults at age 20.

See Exodus 12, 38; Numbers 11,14; 1 Chronicles 31:17, Ezra 3:8 and there are probably some more scriptures that show it.

As with most bible passages, earlier texts may or may not line up... The twelve-and-a-half rule is from the Babylonian Talmud: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZU-nBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA53#v=one...

So the Talmud is not the Bible though.

The Bible, the Old Testament and what the Jews consider Holy Text is the Torah. The Talmud is a body of works of various rabbis; the Talmud mostly the two books of Gemarah and the Mishnah and should not carry the same weight as the Torah. So if one were to consider the Bible (Torah) only, the legal age of an adult appears to be 20. What the Jews did or made up on their own afterwards would be of their own tradition and in some cases in contradiction to the Bible.

The Bible - and Jewish tradition many times do not line up. Even in New Testament times there were issues with this - as Jesus had a beef with the Pharisees because they had all these other laws and rules one had to obey that were not part of the Torah.

Some may find Feliks Koneczny's categorization and analysis[0] of civilizations based on legal system and its relation to ethics, the distinction between private and public law, the distinction between religious and secular law, and so on.

[0] https://www.scribd.com/doc/4464979/ON-THE-PLURALITY-OF-CIVIL...

Ours, whos?

From the homepage:

> I teach at Santa Clara University in the Law School. This spring I am teaching Economic Analysis of Law, and a seminar on Legal Systems Very Different From Ours.

Doesn't answer the question

Sure it does. It makes it unequivocally obvious that it's the American legal system that is referred to.

Is willfully obtuse

Nope. Is trying - unsuccessfully, apparently - to point out how arrogant and offending the use of "ours" is in a supposedly scholarly work: I am the byproduct of a so-called "western" culture, yet don't recognize the law system under which my country of origin operates are being covered by this "ours" used in the title.

Arrogant and offending, how? Who is it offending? How is it arrogant?

Arrogant maybe if it said "the best." But it didn't, it said "ours."

Offending maybe if it said "Shit legal systems." But it didn't, it said "Legal systems."

It isn't really reaching to make a few assumptions. On an English speaking website, owned by an American accelerator in California, with a majority of American users, is it hard to assume that "ours" means "American?"

There are (at least) two different kinds of first-person singular: “me and you” and “me and some other people but not you.”

English, unfortunately, does not distinguish between these cases. “Ours” can mean “mine and yours” or it can mean “mine and that of some other people.”

The author clearly means the latter, and you’re getting offended over your own misunderstand.

"Ours" as in "the one the people attending this course currently fall under" seems quite obvious and non-offensive?

From those listed I’d say the Western world’s.

The list doesn’t mention either common law or civil law. As different from each other as those are they’re still mutually intelligible.

I've read the book and can confirm that you're exactly right.

The author is American so one would be safe to infer that “ours” means Americans.

The list doesn't include Western laws.

- Common law

- Case law (popular in Anglo countries)

- Civil law (popular in Western European countries)

That's because it's meant to look at other legal systems -- ones very different from the ones its audience are familiar with, i.e. those.

But Anglo-American case law is very different from French or German law. The stated purpose of the Code civil was to do away with traditional French law, and it was indeed a great improvement over the previous state of affairs. This could at least be discussed.

Hilariously, you seem to be getting downvoted for providing the correct answer to a question asked in another thread of this discussion.

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