There has to be some basis for people claiming that the laws of the land do not apply to them, but for the life of me, I can’t begin to understand it.
In: 89
They don’t seem that different from the cranks you find in other fields. e.g. in physics and maths you get these people with no qualifications who write long papers declaring that they have made some amazing new discovery, but it’s all just incomprehensible gibberish.
For some reason – I don’t know whether it’s necessarily always mental illness, but it often seems to be a factor – sometimes when people come across a complicated subject that they don’t understand, instead of just acknowledging that they don’t understand it, or working to develop the same understanding as everyone else, they convince themselves that they already understand it. They will come across some highly technical discussion, construct some half-baked interpretation of the language in their head, and insist that it’s the correct viewpoint. And I suppose, from their perspective, that’s what everyone else is doing anyway.
When it comes to the law, it doesn’t help that…
* usually when non-lawyers get interested in the law, it’s because they want to get something important (like financial compensation, or avoiding a conviction) and it can be difficult to accept that it might not actually be possible to achieve what they want
* lawyers and judges are often overly fond of jargon and archaic language, making the law harder to understand than it could be
* often there really is “one weird trick”, if you’re influential enough – politicians, judges and major companies can get pretty crafty with writing/interpreting laws/contracts to achieve the outcomes they want, and it can seem like they’re weaving magic with the text when actually they’re just exercising raw power
Latest Answers