On Sat, 15 May 2004, Charles Matthews wrote:
Shouldn't there be a [[hard cases make bad law]]
page?
Wik-law would be a disaster (Wik being a classic ''hard case''). Laws
made
just to legislate round Wik, which would be the normal interpretation, risk
distorting the whole enterprise.
I'm still for resource-rationing here.
Thank you, Charles. In response to your allusion to law, I consulted my
1933 edition of _Black's Law Dictionary_, only to find myself distracted
by finding & reading such entries as "Butler's Ordinance", "Mason
Dixon's
Line", & the fact that the words "in" & "is" both have
legal definitions.
Now I shall hate myself unless I can spend an hour or two this weekend
browsing this book, rather than busy at more important matters (like
contributing to Wikipedia).
FWIW, this is one of the older editions with the legal references (I
understand that the latest editions removed them, a change that made this
Dictionary less useful to lawyers). For example, the phrase "hard cases
make bad law" (according to my copy of Black's) appeared most famously in
Moore v. Pierson, 6 Iowa, 279, 71 Am. Dec. 409; & the related phrase
"hard cases are the quicksands of the law" in Metropolitan Nat. Bank v.
Campbell Commission Co. (C.C.), 77 F. 705.
Geoff