In today’s discussion, we delve deeper into ideas inspired by Barry Lam’s thought-provoking book, Fewer Rules, Better People.
Lam argues that legalism aims to uphold the principle that justice demands we treat similar cases in the same manner. If you and I commit identical actions but face different consequences, it’s an arbitrary and unjust situation. This premise is reasonable enough.
Yet, therein lies a conundrum. Legalism hinges on the establishment of clear and consistent definitions concerning acceptable behaviors. Regrettably, the pursuit of a universally applicable definition that can accurately categorize every scenario often leads to a philosophical deadlock. As I previously noted in my analysis of Daniel Dennett’s Prime Mammal thought experiment, any defined boundary will inevitably appear somewhat arbitrary, resulting in instances where the demarcation fails to accurately capture reality.
This dilemma isn’t exclusive to the classification of mammals. Michael Huemer, in his extensive work, dissects the concept of knowledge across over 350 pages. In the opening line of the first chapter following the introduction, Huemer candidly states, “In this chapter, we will try and fail to define ‘knowledge’.” Starting with the foundational notion of knowledge as justified true belief, he illustrates scenarios where an individual may possess a justified true belief about X but still lack genuine knowledge of X. This conundrum persists through increasingly intricate definitions. He similarly challenges the notion of defining something as seemingly straightforward as a table. Tasking his students with creating a definition, he reveals that despite their best efforts, they invariably encounter examples of items that are unequivocally tables yet do not conform to their definitions, alongside objects that fit the criteria yet are not tables at all.
This observation is not to suggest that the endeavor to define concepts is futile, nor does it imply that the inherent imprecision of definitions renders the phenomena they seek to describe meaningless. However, we must recognize that within any definition, if we probe deeply enough, we will encounter instances where it unravels. When that occurs, rigid adherence to a definition can lead us down a misguided path.
A prime illustration of this is the Clean Waters Act passed by Congress. The intent behind this legislation seemed straightforward: to impose limits on pollutants entering “the waters of the United States.” However, the phrase “the waters of the United States” proved too ambiguous and necessitated a more precise definition. Regulators attempted to clarify this by including clauses that described it as areas “sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.”
This regulatory verbosity created complications for Ocie and Carey Mills, a father-son duo constructing a cabin on a wooded lot in Florida. Unfortunately, this seemingly innocuous plot of land, devoid of standing water, contained a small patch of marsh grass—an indicator of “vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.” Consequently, when they introduced sand and fill dirt to the otherwise dry land for their cabin construction, they were deemed guilty of “discharging pollutants into the navigable waters of the United States.” The presiding judge acknowledged that it was unrealistic to expect the Mills to comprehend that dry land could be classified as “navigable waters” based on the presence of some saturated-soil vegetation. Nevertheless, adhering to The Rules Are The Rules™ doctrine, Ocie and Carey Mills ended up serving 18 months in federal prison for what amounted to environmental “pollution.”
(As a postscript, after their release, they were mandated to remove those “pollutants.” In a twist of fate, they persuaded the judge overseeing their case to visit the site. Upon inspection, the judge concurred that identifying the area as a “wetland” qualifying as “navigable waters” was nonsensical, even going so far as to describe the legal definitions invoked in this case as “a reversal of terms that is worthy of Alice in Wonderland.”)
This situation underscores how the boundaries of legal definitions can work against the very objectives legalism seeks to uphold—namely, the prevention of arbitrary treatment by ensuring similar cases receive similar treatment. On one hand, you have a clear-cut case of someone discharging waste into a river. On the other hand, there are the Mills, merely placing fill dirt on a dry driveway. For a judge to equate these two scenarios and assert that both parties deserve incarceration—because justice demands treating like cases alike—would seem absurd, almost as if lifted from a Monty Python sketch, were it not a genuine occurrence. This scenario illustrates a case of treating entirely dissimilar cases as if they were identical, equating the act of adding dirt to a driveway with dumping toxic chemicals into a river. This appears to be as arbitrary as the very outcomes legalism aims to avoid.
If justice mandates that like cases be treated alike, we must also remember that a strict interpretation of legalism, which eschews nuance or exceptions, can result in treating blatantly dissimilar cases as if they were equivalent.
