This comic/guide is wonderful. I particularly like the summary on trials by jury[1]. It's not great, but it's much better than the other legal systems we've had.

edit: I also like this sequence explaining why thoughts are not crimes. [2]

[1]: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=337

[2]: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=380

Nice! That was super helpful. I wish the author would put arrows on his flow chart though. Clearly not an engineer :)

Proceeding from the bottom up makes for interesting reading.

It's crazy how the section about dealing with the police is nearly double the size of the rest of the chart.

How are Levandowski or Uber invoking the Fifth Amendment, then? Levandowski is not being asked by the government since this is a civl suit (unless the court counts as the government, per the flowchart?). And Uber is a corporation.

He's said he won't provide documents for the trial, at which point Google's lawyers would ask for a judge's order compelling him to do so. His lawyer says he won't provide them in that case either. They skipped the step of waiting for the actual order.

so long... thats not handy at all, on the go at least

but I wish that lawyers could produce these flow charts when they say "it depends"

Sorry, is it not handy because it's inaccurate? Or simply because it's so lengthy?

That's the gag (as you can see in the punchline at the bottom): the specifics of the law is absurd and deeply hostile to the intent of the Constitution.

> the specifics of the law is absurd and deeply hostile to the intent of the Constitution.

All of these scenarios exist because courts have interpreted the constitution. I'm not sure SCOTUS is "deeply hostile to the intent of the Constitution."

Yes, it's complicated, but that is because real life is complicated.

Tangentially, this is why something like Ethereum or other "Smart Contracts" are so hard and why lawyers exist. The real world gets complicated quickly.

> I'm not sure SCOTUS is "deeply hostile to the intent of the Constitution."

Wickard v. Filburn was a mockery of the intent of the Constitution in all but name. And it's not the only case like that.

The problem with SCOTUS is that it can really do whatever the hell it wants. It's <em>supposed</em> to do the right thing, but because it is the final arbiter, they get to decide what the right thing is. Sometimes they do it in ways that are wrong in any other meaningful sense.

They're not the final arbiter, if the SCOTUS does something wrong the constitution can be amended to clarify or change the intent of the law. Then the SCOTUS will be beholden to that constitutional amendment.

That there isn't political will to routinely do this in response to bad SCOTUS rulings is not an inherent problem with the system itself.

The barrier to amend the constitution is so high, that it's virtually insurmountable in a highly partisan environment, if the ruling is itself partisan.

Some would say it's a feature, not a bug.

let gets_complicated = "FDR is going to pack the court if I don't start finding ways to go along with him"

If anything, the Fifth Amendment has been interpreted more broadly than intended! The Constitution just says that the government can't compel someone "to be a witness" against himself "in any criminal case." Just reading the text, the only questions are (1) is this a criminal case, and (2) is the government forcing you to be a witness in the case? If yes, the Fifth Amendment applies. If not, then it doesn't. Easy peasy.

But as interpreted, the Fifth Amendment covers much more than "be[ing] a witness," and doesn't only apply "in a criminal case." And the whole Miranda thing is pulled totally out of thin air. If you look at the chart, most of the exceptions and edge cases in the are there to cabin and delineate all the extra protections the Supreme Court has layered on top of the Fifth Amendment.