We will always need an arbiter to decide! The judge has a very important place in human culture for just this reason. Laws cannot be 100% concrete, or we would be computers.
Even murder. You said
it's generally not okay to kill other people.
So true! Unless it's self defense. Or war. Or you are playing a video game and its just their avatar.
There are so many conditionals in circumstances, and that is before we even consider motives. Motive is often used, but not required, in a majority of cases that require understanding of the state of mind. Another, different aspect of the human mind is intent. Was this intentional, negligent or accidental without culpability?
Laws are important but, in my eyes, should be kept as simple as possible. Then we must have good judges that can interpret individual instances and be flexible to circumstances.
Our values should be concrete. Our laws should be flexible.
Love and Light!
I think in this case, you would be talking about the application of the penalty/punishment... Murder would get transmuted to manslaughter and/or have a deferred sentence... that sort of thing?
However, then this leads to another problem... who chooses the judges? I think in the US it is a political appointment? This is strange from an outsiders point of view... however having the legal profession nominate or having a direct election also have their particular disadvantages....
I am not so keen on the US system, even though I have lived in it. I know some higher judges are definitely political appointees, perhaps the lower ones have other ways of being chosen.
Manslaughter and murder are different things, because the law has defined them as such. This is the law trying to make its flexibility concrete.
I always tend to think about my experience with coding a computer or a website. There are always situations that you cannot anticipate when writing the code, thus there occur bugs, exploits, hacks, etc.
Then we must return to the code and adjust, add flexibility or change entirely.
The law is the same, except we are imperfect unique beings! We need much more flexibility that even computer code can express.
Thank you for such an interesting discussion.
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