Tovarich EmmyNoether on Nostr: I don't know about law, but in moral philosophy there used to be a rule of thumb ...
I don't know about law, but in moral philosophy there used to be a rule of thumb "ought implies can," i.e. you cannot say someone *ought* to behave in a certain way if it is *impossible as a matter of fact* for a person to behave that way.
So for example you should not try to impose a moral rule which says "a truly virtuous person must fly everywhere" because as a matter of physics and physiology, people cannot fly.
This principle really should (ought?) to apply to the law. But it rarely does.
(There was an infamous case - though it didn't make it onto the statute book - where someone in one of the US states sought to legally define pi as exactly 3 because 3.14 blah blah - it's an irrational real - was so inconvenient. This is the same thing, but applied to human reproductive biology.)
So for example you should not try to impose a moral rule which says "a truly virtuous person must fly everywhere" because as a matter of physics and physiology, people cannot fly.
This principle really should (ought?) to apply to the law. But it rarely does.
(There was an infamous case - though it didn't make it onto the statute book - where someone in one of the US states sought to legally define pi as exactly 3 because 3.14 blah blah - it's an irrational real - was so inconvenient. This is the same thing, but applied to human reproductive biology.)