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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

It makes sense in context, where the author is asking the court if there is anything they could take another look at with the goal of prompting them to reconsider. He is not asking if they would like to do A or B, but rather if they would please consider doing A in order to then do B.

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Not bad; so you say it's "to review in order to reconsider", or something. So I'll buy that interpretation. I still think the language is clumsy, and way too ambiguous for a lawyer.

I'm sorry the author didn't explain why these words are magical. They flipped the judge (who seems to be hardline) from 180 days jail, to time served. Is there some rule of court procedure that these words invoke? Do the words comprise an implicit threat to appeal?

The purpose of the article is to talk about the arbitrary and sometimes cruel nature of the legal system. They have power because they are known to have power, because what lawyer will overstep the boundary implied by the almighty power bestowed onto the judge to effectively ask, “will you please just do a different ruling?”

They don't invoke anything, beyond a simple appeal to humanity. And the fact that they work, when everything else about the legal system is based around mechanical certainty, is terrifying for a lawyer; because it undermines the system they're trained to understand as “if X then Y will (almost) always happen.” If a judge can just decide, “you know what, instead of Y I'll decide to do Σ,” then that shakes the implicit trust of the system. By revealing that the Justice System is based around the whims of a small group of people with disproportionate power.

Thank you! I was having a very frustrating time trying to parse the titular sentence, after all that build up.

Username checks out by the way.

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