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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

> after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.

> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.

I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.

In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.

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Imagine that a whole nation's statute laws, and associated common laws, were frozen in time for over a thousand years, because (the statutes were declared to be immutable canon, and) any judges with sufficient authority to strike out old common law and to establish new common law were long gone. That's Judaism (specifically the Talmud)! (Speaking from experience as a Jew.)

The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!

This has been litigated well over a thousand years ago. To put it in modern legal terms, the legitimacy of an Eruv is a super precedent. It is discussed in depth in the Talmud, which is the clearest source of Jewish law.

Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.

The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.

There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.

This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.

> This type of "trick" is foundational to... every common law system.

Disagree. Courts bend and stretch the law but only up to a point, and the more twisted interpretations tend to get overruled. Precedent is respected but only up to a point. And when people do apply a trick, everyone acknowledges that it's a trick, that they're subverting the will of the original drafters of the law because they think they know better than them.

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