В заголовках новостей этого часа

[birdwatcher]

Blooomberg: Федеральное правительство наняло столько народу для обработки результатов переписи населения, что изменило ситуацию с занятостью населения.

ibid.: на месте преступления -- при попытке вылететь в Египет двумя различными рейсами -- задержаны двое любителей Востока. Им предъявлены обвинения в занятиях физкультурой и игре в пейнтбол. Арестованным угрожает пожизненное заключение.

Comments

[averros.livejournal.com]

Generalization is generally meaningless. That's why there's a need for courts and the reasonableness and impartiality standard for judges and juries.

Libertarian legal approach does not consist of trying to codify everything (if anything, codifying is a statist game), but rather in lying down general principles (i.e. proportionality of punishment to crime aka lex talonis, the principle of restitutory justice rather than punitive, deterring, reformatory, etc) and to allow competition between local interpretations of these general principles (aka "polycentric law") by allowing competition for provision of justice.

It means that circumstances of every particular case have to be considered before an opinion could be formed. Additionally, libertarian legal system does not have consistency as its goal - so it is quite possible that different judges will arrive to different conclusions in same circumstances (consistency is a foolish idea anyway - the desire for uniformity and consistency produces serious legal hobgoblins like people serving life for stealing a gumstick - not an uncommon occasion in CA, by the way).

Basically, what libertarian legal theory is about is rough consensus on what constitutes crime, with borderline cases considered on case by case basis by impartial judges who are expected to ground their reasoning in the general principles. It's all about upholding spirit rather than the letter of the law.