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Comment by ridgeguy | Hacker News Reader

Our legal system has always depended on vibes to mitigate technically correct unjust or catastrophic outcomes. It's broadly labelled "prosecutorial discretion", and operates at every level of the justice system.

IMHO, it's essential.

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Good vibes, or bad vibes? The technicalities of the law keep both in check. Vibes don't just allow us to "mitigate technically correct unjust...outcomes" - they also let people in power "mitigate technically correct just...outcomes" to achieve their own desired ends.

> has always depended on vibes

Jury trials do. Administrative trials never have.

> It's broadly labelled "prosecutorial discretion",

Federal DAs win 98% of their cases. This discretion is not what you think it is.

> IMHO, it's essential.

Well, unless they're J6 defendants, or any other group labeled by the media as undesirable.

Prosecutorial discretion hasn’t meant much to me since the Bond got prosecuted for violating a chemical weapons treaty, and Yates got prosecuted for fish-shredding.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_v._United_States_(2014)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yates_v._United_States_(2015...

Sometimes the vibes are wrong, and things go haywire. This is why zero tolerance policies have to be instituted in schools. That doesnt mean the general idea is wrong. Strict adherence to written law will always fail justice. The world is too nuanced and too fractal to handle every edge case well.

I seem to recall that zero-tolerance policies caused the expulsion of multiple Boy Scouts who were merely obeying the requirement that they always have a multifunction pocket tool with them (such as a Victorinox knife), and these caused the Scouts to rescind the rule.

"Zero tolerance" policies are a generally a tool of the Sith.

Every system fails sometimes. The only interesting question is whether it is systemic or not.

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