There are… but there are loopholes. Which is why the vehicles get bigger every year. They’re all using loopholes to continue not bothering to meet the standards the regulations set forth.
Even better would be if the US switched from “letter of the law” to “spirit of the law” because as it stands, there’s a lot of lawmakers just throwing their hands in the air and saying “well they’re not breaking the letter of the law, so there’s nothing we can do” while completely ignoring that it’s clear that the person in question is breaking the spirit of the law when it was written.
It allows for laws to be endlessly re-interpreted, and at this point even the Supreme Court has tossed out the idea of previous decisions actually mattering. They’ll just re-interpret every law to be beneficial to their purposes every time they need to re-interpret it.
At a certain point you have to stop and admit the loopholes are being left open on purpose.
If you think law has too much room for interpretation when we care about it says, what makes you think anything would improve if we instead cared only about what it meant to say?
The spirit of the law is important in American jurisprudence, but there’s a reason that no serious legal academic advocates for abandoning black-letter interpretation: a cornerstone of jurisprudence is predictability. In order to be justly bound by the law, a reasonable person must be able to understand its borders. This gives rise to principles in US law concerning vagueness (vague laws are void ab initio) and due process. We can’t always ascertain what the “spirit of the law” is, should be, or was intended to be, but we can always ascertain what the law is. Even in common law and case law, standards must be articulated, and the state must give effect to what is actually said, and not what it wishes had been said. Abandoning this principle in order to “close loopholes” is just inviting bad actors who currently exploit oversights to instead wield unbridled power against ordinary people who could never have even anticipated the danger.
That loopholes are left open deliberately is not a failure of legal interpretation. It’s a direct consequence of corruption and regulatory capture. Rewriting American jurisprudence won’t solve those problems. Hanging oil magnates and cheaply purchased bureaucrats will.
I mean, the “spirit of the law” itself is extremely vague and allows for even more interpretation than the letter of the law.
You can easily fix the letter of the law by just changing what it says. You can’t fix when the Supreme Court decides that the spirit of the law is contrary to the letter, which they have done repeatedly.
In other words, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t care what the law says, and instead should govern on what we feel the law means.
Following the spirit of the law would be extremely dangerous as one’s interpretation of the spirit of the law maybe comply differently from another. There’s also the issue of being punished for following what is written in the law only to be unjustly punished for something that’s not written anywhere in the law. How are you supposed to trust the law if you cannot rely upon that law to be accurate? The real issue is lawmakers not covering all of every edge case either that be out of ignorance or malice and allowing those loopholes to exist in the first place.
There needs to be a social cost of owning these abominations. If we make it more expensive or more regulated, they’ll still find the people who want to drive them. If we make them embarrassing, shameful, or otherwise costly in social standing, the market for them will soon collapse.
Other countries require a special license for vehicles that big.
It costs more, and requires frequent tests, written and driving. The large vehicles are also prohibited from driving down small side streets and using normal parking spaces.
Because at this size, they’re only needed as commercial vehicles.
I live in Basel, Switzerland, lovely old city, very unfriendly to cars, which is fine due to the great public transit. There is this one dickhead who has a bright, shiny red Dodge Ram. It’s monstrous. And it doesn’t fuckin’ fit in the streets, I’d love to see how much in fines that idiot has had for blocking trams, traffic, and all the other nonsense I’ve seen it do, was actually stuck in traffic once because it got stuck on a corner, took 30 mins to get it backed up and out of the way.
Right now Congress gives regulatory agencies general guidelines, and the agencies work out the finer details. Soon it will likely be left to Congress and the courts to iron out those finer details. And both of those bodies are slow, and courts are fragmented across states.
It’s actually a few different cases, but they all hinge on whether the Executive branch has a legal standing to create Federal agencies that can create and execute regulation.
There’s a good chance we could soon be in a USA where experts don’t have a voice, and the courts suddenly are in charge of the regulatory state.
As Ghostalmedia pointed out, this case is specifically the one where the Supreme Court has been specifically asked to rule on whether the Chevron defense (the bedrock case that allows the US administrative state to functionally exist) should be overruled outright, or at least limited in scope.
There needs to be regulations on the size of personal vehicles for a shit ton of reasons…
But this one by itself should be enough.
There are… but there are loopholes. Which is why the vehicles get bigger every year. They’re all using loopholes to continue not bothering to meet the standards the regulations set forth.
Loopholes are always going to happen…
But if you close them, then the problem is fixed.
Currently we just ignore them, instead of passing regulations that close the loophole and clarify
We could even go a step further and require plans to be approved by a regulatory agency before mass production can start.
Boom, problem solved forever.
Even better would be if the US switched from “letter of the law” to “spirit of the law” because as it stands, there’s a lot of lawmakers just throwing their hands in the air and saying “well they’re not breaking the letter of the law, so there’s nothing we can do” while completely ignoring that it’s clear that the person in question is breaking the spirit of the law when it was written.
It allows for laws to be endlessly re-interpreted, and at this point even the Supreme Court has tossed out the idea of previous decisions actually mattering. They’ll just re-interpret every law to be beneficial to their purposes every time they need to re-interpret it.
At a certain point you have to stop and admit the loopholes are being left open on purpose.
If you think law has too much room for interpretation when we care about it says, what makes you think anything would improve if we instead cared only about what it meant to say?
The spirit of the law is important in American jurisprudence, but there’s a reason that no serious legal academic advocates for abandoning black-letter interpretation: a cornerstone of jurisprudence is predictability. In order to be justly bound by the law, a reasonable person must be able to understand its borders. This gives rise to principles in US law concerning vagueness (vague laws are void ab initio) and due process. We can’t always ascertain what the “spirit of the law” is, should be, or was intended to be, but we can always ascertain what the law is. Even in common law and case law, standards must be articulated, and the state must give effect to what is actually said, and not what it wishes had been said. Abandoning this principle in order to “close loopholes” is just inviting bad actors who currently exploit oversights to instead wield unbridled power against ordinary people who could never have even anticipated the danger.
That loopholes are left open deliberately is not a failure of legal interpretation. It’s a direct consequence of corruption and regulatory capture. Rewriting American jurisprudence won’t solve those problems. Hanging oil magnates and cheaply purchased bureaucrats will.
The law meant that it’s not a crime if you’re of a certain race, gender, economic status, or sexual orientation.
I mean, the “spirit of the law” itself is extremely vague and allows for even more interpretation than the letter of the law.
You can easily fix the letter of the law by just changing what it says. You can’t fix when the Supreme Court decides that the spirit of the law is contrary to the letter, which they have done repeatedly.
In other words, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t care what the law says, and instead should govern on what we feel the law means.
Following the spirit of the law would be extremely dangerous as one’s interpretation of the spirit of the law maybe comply differently from another. There’s also the issue of being punished for following what is written in the law only to be unjustly punished for something that’s not written anywhere in the law. How are you supposed to trust the law if you cannot rely upon that law to be accurate? The real issue is lawmakers not covering all of every edge case either that be out of ignorance or malice and allowing those loopholes to exist in the first place.
There needs to be a social cost of owning these abominations. If we make it more expensive or more regulated, they’ll still find the people who want to drive them. If we make them embarrassing, shameful, or otherwise costly in social standing, the market for them will soon collapse.
Other countries require a special license for vehicles that big.
It costs more, and requires frequent tests, written and driving. The large vehicles are also prohibited from driving down small side streets and using normal parking spaces.
Because at this size, they’re only needed as commercial vehicles.
I live in Basel, Switzerland, lovely old city, very unfriendly to cars, which is fine due to the great public transit. There is this one dickhead who has a bright, shiny red Dodge Ram. It’s monstrous. And it doesn’t fuckin’ fit in the streets, I’d love to see how much in fines that idiot has had for blocking trams, traffic, and all the other nonsense I’ve seen it do, was actually stuck in traffic once because it got stuck on a corner, took 30 mins to get it backed up and out of the way.
But hey, at least he’s famous now, sort of
Infamous, more like.
The conservative Supreme Court is about to make that a lot harder in a few days. Get ready for the Canonaro to be real.
What decision is this? I’ve not been paying attention to Supreme Court doings lately.
The Dobbs case of this session is Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo, and it’s looking like the court is going to side with the conservatives.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/17/1224939610/supreme-court-chevron-doctrine
Right now Congress gives regulatory agencies general guidelines, and the agencies work out the finer details. Soon it will likely be left to Congress and the courts to iron out those finer details. And both of those bodies are slow, and courts are fragmented across states.
It’s actually a few different cases, but they all hinge on whether the Executive branch has a legal standing to create Federal agencies that can create and execute regulation.
There’s a good chance we could soon be in a USA where experts don’t have a voice, and the courts suddenly are in charge of the regulatory state.
There are lots of little cases, but the nuclear bomb is Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Raimondo.
Loper will be to regulation as Dobbs was to abortion.
This is the no more EPA, FAA, FDA etc case right?
As Ghostalmedia pointed out, this case is specifically the one where the Supreme Court has been specifically asked to rule on whether the Chevron defense (the bedrock case that allows the US administrative state to functionally exist) should be overruled outright, or at least limited in scope.
Chevron Defense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc.
Current Major Case In Question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Raimondo#Supreme_Court
Chevron