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GOOD QUESTION FOR GROKLAW. | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
GOOD QUESTION FOR GROKLAW.
Authored by: Wol on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 07:39 PM EDT
In the US, I think the standard procedure is "well, that doesn't apply in
this case", get a conflicting ruling, and if necessary punt it all the way
up the appeals system.

And if you're in a different circuit to the original case that makes it easier -
you can say "that case doesn't set a precedent here". Rather harder,
of course, if that case went to appeal in your own circuit.

But at any time you should be able to say "that case doesn't apply to this
set of facts", and if the original case got the facts wrong that should be
a fairly easy sell. Of course, showing that the original case got the facts
wrong might not be an easy task.

The best thing to do, if you can, is what that schoolteacher did with the
"pi = 3" legislation. As I read the story (on wikipedia?) he got
chatting with some of the congress-critturs or whatever they were and said
"you know your rule that pi = 3? Do you remember your old school maths?
Let's do ... - and presto pi now equals FOUR!". What's known in maths as
"proof by absurdity" or "if we assume it's true, we can then
prove it's false and vice versa".

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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