[copypasterepeat]

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that's just how the justice system works. Reasonable people can disagree about what exactly a complicated statement says, since language is full of ambiguities. People have been discussing what the U.S. Constitution says exactly from the day it was written and there are still a lot of disagreements.

The standard response to this is that laws should be written in ways that are non-ambiguous but that's easier said than done. Not to mention that sometimes the lawmakers can't fully agree themselves so they leave some statements intentionally ambiguous so that they can be interpreted by the courts.

[kmoser]

Nobody reasonably expects all laws to be written completely unambiguously. But since laws (and indeed all manner of legal documents) are filled with lists and modifiers, I don't think it's unreasonable to require that they be written to a certain standard which defines how these lists and modifiers should be interpreted, similar to RFC 2119 https://microformats.org/wiki/rfc-2119.

[skissane]

I’ve often thought we’d get more sensible results in court cases on computer-related issues if we had specialised courts where the judges were required to have a relevant degree (computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, information systems, etc). But I doubt it is going to happen any time soon.

[shagie]

It happens from time to time. https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-googl... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15834800 42 comments)

> These days, he often looks for some kind of STEM background for the IP desk. It’s not necessary, but it helps. Bill Toth, the IP clerk during Oracle v. Google, didn’t have a STEM background, but he told me that the judge had specifically asked him to take a computer science course in preparation for his clerkship. When I asked Alsup about it, he laughed a little — he had no recollection of “making” Toth take any classes — but he did acknowledge that sometimes he gives clerks a heads up about what kind of cases are coming their way, and what kind of classes might be useful ahead of time.

Note that it's not necessarily the judge that's important as an individual knowing the material, but that the clerks who work for the judge are.

[ptsneves]

Civil code law uses that way of thinking, where there are specialised courts for different areas: administrative, civil, labor, family, commercial and so on. I actually am not so sure it is great as these courts increase the depths of the bureaucracy to the point of being self serving. They also serve to segment expertise.

[Xelynega]

Correction, that is how common law legal system works.

Alternatives like codified law exist and are practiced, just not in the US or Canada.