Mischief, despite the modern aura of fun that the word has acquired, can be a serious matter. A book called A penal code prepared by the Indian law commissioners, and published by command of the governor general of India in council (Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1837), explores some of the legal logical that applied then […]
Tag: law
When rats meet the legal system: Vermin trials reappraised
“Everyone has heard of a kangaroo court. But how about a court for kangaroos? What about a court for caterpillars? Impossible though it seems, for 250 years French, Italian, and Swiss legal systems had just that. Their ecclesiastic courts tried insects and rodents for property crimes as legal persons under the same laws and according […]
To Simply Examine the Complexity of the Law
Can you, in some simple way, measure how complex a country’s legal system has gotten? This 41-page study perhaps does exactly that, more or less: “Measuring the Complexity of the Law: The United States Code,” Daniel Martin Katz [pictured here] and Michael James Bommarito II, SSRN report #2307352, August 1, 2013. The study comes equipped with […]
Littlewood’s Law (of miracles-per-month)
Wikipedia describes Littlewood’s Law: Littlewood’s Law, or adage, states that an individual can expect to experience “miracles” at the rate of about one per month. The law was framed by Cambridge University Professor J. E. Littlewood, and published in a 1986 collection of his work, A Mathematician’s Miscellany. It seeks among other things to debunk one element of supposed supernatural phenomenology […]