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Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

We all owe djb a great deal of gratitude for this hard-won freedom. This is one of the greatest victories in hacker history. I hope to never see this stricken from the law of the land.

Code is speech.

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Unfortunately, it's not the law of the land --- it's a judicial opinion, written in water and subject to change without notice. (Which is how judicial opinion should be; this is just a good opinion that ought to be codified by the legislature.)

Too much of US law is actually judicial opinion - there should be some requirement that if a law is overturned/interpreted, that the legislature has to fix the original law (example: the Affordable Care act still insists it's not a tax even though it was ruled a tax).

> Too much of US law is actually judicial opinion

This is by 'design':

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

Not sure if it's possible to convert things:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)

IANAL but in theory you don't have to convert the legal system to civil law to do away with the excess reliance on legal precedent in our society.

If we had a healthy legislative system then things could be better codified in law that was passed by elected representatives.

If we had a healthy legislative system.

I feel that this whole attitude is coming from the latest Roe V Wade issue, but remember all Roe v Wade decision would be to send the power to regulate the issue of abortion back to the states.

If there is a legislative will to do something at federal level, then in an alternate system of civil law too there wouldn't be a statute allowing abortion.

In fact, without Supreme Court's Roe v Wade's 1970s decision, abortion would be pretty much illegal in the US (as it was, right before the 1970s decision).

There is no way that the US could convert to civil law. The country was founded on the common law of Britain. Widespread adoption of civil law would require the rewriting of literally all of the founding documents ... in a country where making even a tiny change to an amendment is forever a bridge to far. It would be a revolution, a new country.

The amusing thing is that most states in the USA actually incorporate all English law, usually prior to about 1600. So all those English statutes from say, 1100, like the Magna Carta, are still on the law books in the USA.

Here is Illinois:

(5 ILCS 50/1) (from Ch. 1, par. 801) Sec. 1. That the common law of England, so far as the same is applicable and of a general nature, and all statutes or acts of the British parliament made in aid of, and to supply the defects of the common law, prior to the fourth year of James the First, excepting the second section of the sixth chapter of 43d Elizabeth, the eighth chapter of 13th Elizabeth, and ninth chapter of 37th Henry Eighth, and which are of a general nature and not local to that kingdom, shall be the rule of decision, and shall be considered as of full force until repealed by legislative authority.

Very interesting! I just learned that these are called Reception Statutes, adopted by all US states except Louisiana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_statute#United_State...

We also owe a bit to Peter Junger (https://web.archive.org/web/20061012211535/http://samsara.la...).

He did quite a bit of work (and had a similar lawsuit) that code was speech.

He use to attend the Linux Users Groups meeting I was part of. Amazing person and really friggin' smart. Also, he was pretty good with Tex.

And Phil Zimmermann. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Co...

Interesting to note that both he and Bernstein no longer live on US soil.

Absolutely, we owe Zimmerman.

> Code is speech.

Not all code. From the linked article:

> However, the court cautioned that not all software could be considered expressive, and thus not all source code would necessarily be protected.

No, code will be deemed whatever fits the idealogy of the judiciary. Legal reasoning is secondary except for show nowadays given the partisan majority of the supreme court. Specious and convenient reasoning abound.

The Myth of the Rule of Law - John Hasnas

Thank for the interesting book suggestion. You made my day.

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