2 thoughts on “Wednesday Writs: Em’s Too Busy to Write Up a Case Edition

  1. WW1: Is it just me, or does the press not bother to link to the actual text of a law that they are discussing? I see that there are some links in the CNN article from WW7.

    In general, I support changing self defense laws to limit the duty to retreat, because in the actual moment, a person is not going to be thinking, “Did I retreat enough to satisfy the duty, or do I need to keep running away? What will the DA think when he’s looking over the reports from the safety of his office?”. But at the same time, we don’t want citizens to have the same flexibility the police enjoy (We don’t actually want the police to have that flexibility either, but it seems we all accept it; “I thought his cell phone was a gun, I was in fear for my life, so I shot him with my full magazine, reloaded, and kept shooting. Totally reasonable, don’t you see…”)Report

    1. I don’t know how Ohio writes their bills. In Colorado, a bill modifying an existing law is basically a set of instructions for modifying the current text. (If you’re a UNIX person, think diff only worse.) Page after page of things like, ‘In Section 3, paragraph B, line 6, strike “fully.” and substitute “fully, except for the cases listed in paragraph D.”‘ Learning to read/write this stuff was one of the odder things about being on the legislative staff. Changes were enrolled from time to time but in a form that reflected both the prior and current text, with strikethrough, underline, and double underline.

      The fully-enrolled text is available sometime after the session ends, in LexisNexis. Linking to it is… difficult.Report

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