Posted by Aguila Blanca: But the question is not whether or not it should be lawful for a citizen to employ deadly force in a manner that is not reasonable, the question is whether or not it IS lawful. And if the law does not say it is unlawful, then it is lawful.
True.
The fact that a prior appellate court ruling read into the law something that clearly is not there doesn't impress me.
You clearly do not understand the law--at all.
The court did not "read""
anything "into the law." The superior court reviewed the statute as originally enacted by the legislature in the course of ruling upon questions raised by an appellant, and made a ruling on how long-standing legal principles apply.
That is the proper role of the courts, and it has been for centuries. And rulings of that kind are authoritative, unless and until they are changed by rulings rendered at a later time, by higher courts, by changes to the statutes (which, of course, are always subject to judicial review), or by constitutional amendment.
No statute that has been properly questioned in an appeal defendant is immune from clarification or from being stricken from the statutes altogether.
The
law is defined by (1) what
all relevant statutes say, taken in combination,
and (2)
all relevant precedential rulings on the law.
That "something" may have been "clearly not there" at one time, but it most certainly is now.
Several years ago I went head-to-head with a state official who had statutory authority to interpret the administrative regulations ....
Completely irrelevant.
Words have meanings. When ordinary people can't look up a law and conduct themselves in accordance with what the law says, we do not have a nation of laws. The law in question ....
...is,
as a matter of law, made up of a statute, or statutes,
and precedential rulings by a higher court...
Mr. Chief Justice Jay's comments tell us that jurors should respectfully consider what a judge tells them the law says. I'm okay with that.
But were they based on "the law" as you insist on defining it?
(Ans: Yes. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.)
But when a judge's instructions run contrary to what a law plainly says,....
Unless the instructions are in error, they will not. And "what "the law plainly says" is
not defined by the wording of a single statute, taken in isolation, as it was written when it was enacted.
That should be patently obvious to you, since our system of jurisprudence dates back to a time in which states adopted the Common Law and there were no legislated statutes at all.
