alt Hacker NewsThis isn't really true though. This is how the law used to work, until people did the research and discovered it let to absolutely loads of mad variation in outcomes, with people with similar offences getting totally different sentences based on random luck. Hence most countries not have pretty strict sentencing guidelines, with a bit of space for judgement on top (despite a lot of protesting from judges).
https://www.ubs.com/global/en/our-firm/what-we-do/our-brand/...
You should be able to predict the outcome of a court case if you have all the facts available. That's what fairness means.
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Non-grey-area cases are common, and never reach court.
If a case reaches court then that means that either the evidence or the law isn't clear enough for the person to simply plead guilty (or the case to be dropped).
Our sense of what is fair evolved over millions of years, and is not internally consistent. How could the law ever be completely fair?
“most countries now have pretty strict sentencing guidelines”
That’s a vast, vast overstatement.
“You should be able to predict the outcome of a court case if you have all the facts available. That's what fairness means.”
Too much of a simplification. The role of a jury is to interpret the evidence, every jury is unique. Evidence is not an absolute, there are no “facts”. A judge can include/exclude evidence that would sway a jury one way or the other. Sentencing, even without guidelines, is the least variable part of the criminal justice system in the western world.
Something like 90% of both criminal and business cases in the US never get to trial - the rules are deterministic enough the vast majority of the time to avoid trial. The stuff we hear about on TV are the edge cases.