Thread by @ThatsMauvelous

When I started law school, I discovered law is bullshit. I was not prepared for this.

In other fields, truth is found by experimentation or by reasoning from first principles. In law, there is nothing to experiment on, and no real first principles to reason from.

Judges and scholars sometimes speak of "natural law" as a thing that exists outside and above the legal system. This is nonsense. "Natural law" is code for "I'm pulling this out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure if you looked within your own ass, you'd find something similar."

In law, the closest thing to a basic principle is that people must be persuaded that the acts of the state are just. Everything flows messily from this.

Per Harry Frankfurt, bullshit is that which is offered to persuade w/o regard for truth. Ergo, law is bullshit.

This was extremely disorienting.

I was a software engineer, so I was accustomed to thinking thoughts, writing code, and then running my code it to see if it works.

You don't really get to test legal arguments like that. The only test is whether they persuade other humans.

Moving to a new field so deeply rooted in persuasion has changed the way I think about knowledge.

I am more mindful of the vectors by which bias and opinion sneak into ostensibly-objective reasoning, and I'm more skeptical of subsequent conclusions.

I know less than I used to.

@Lithros wrote an extremely thoughtful response thread, so if this train of thought interests you, continue here:

https://x.com/Lithros/status/1321674054533894144?s=19

See also

https://x.com/maybegray/status/1314972093688156161

@maybegray has a deep-dive thread on administrative law with a more optimistic framing.

actual legitimacy and apparent legitimacy as separate-but-related goals of the legal system:

https://x.com/maybegray/status/1338944006999298048

this realization was my gateway to shitposting on twitter, b/c it's basically the same thing

https://x.com/visakanv/status/1412792179227979777?s=19