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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sphyre" data-source="post: 4539675" data-attributes="member: 55424">Actually lawyers argue at great length about whether a law has actually been broken.  Simply put, whether you are subject to legal repercussions based on a given action can be independent of whether an actual law was broken.Given the nature of language and the ability to create multiple valid interpretations from a given sentence lawyers in this society hopefully are adept at illustrating that (in the case of defense) no actual law was broken or (in the case of offense) that a law was broken, and the offender should be subject to punishment due to having broken the law.  Lawyers study the law; which means there is a tangible thing to be studied.  While law usually created due to the opinion of the majority, once it is codified, it is, and the opinion merely lead to the codification, it does not further modify it without official action.  Therefor, what is legal is based on what was codified and decided upon at the time of codification, not what current opinions are held (with exception to when it is re-codified and revised.)  This forum and the viewers are not representative of the official codification of law, and therefor their opinions do not matter when determining whether something is currently the law or not.So yes, this is the case.  What you are legally accountable for is what the current codified law is.  You are right that it is derived from opinion, but once it is codified, you are bound by it.  This doesn't mean things can't change.  For example, someone may have broken the law, gone to court, and even though the law was broken, the pertinence of the need for such a law may be brought into question and the law later changed to amend the for the situation brought forth in the case, but the fact remains that at the time of breaking the law, the law was broken - it was just deemed an unjust law by a court of law, and revised.  The fact that it can change like that is exactly why the Ex Post Facto law was put in place by the US government, as when there is a new law, that might have been previously broken, if it was not a law at the time of indecent, it is not a broken law.And explaining such distinctions requires quite the amount of wording.  When it comes to explaining the subtle yet necessary distinctions being as exact as possible with your wording is key.  While I understand the gist of your post, it does not completely encompass the relationship between opinion and law.</blockquote>

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