What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
Georgia
My hobby includes photography of native fish, which often involves capture and release. Generally with the least intrusive possible capture techniques. But certain events have lead me to attempt dot all my legal i's in my activities. I have no impending legal charges.
This concerns a specific use of "and" in the law. When I look up the legal meaning of "and" it is deemed irrational, like the square root of -2 is to math. However, in most cases the intended meaning is obvious and honored as such by the law. Yet in the case below I do not not how to parse how it was intended or how I can reasonably expect it to be interpreted in a court.
I have trimmed the text to the relevant text. The full section can be seen here:
Redirecting
Georgia Code Section § 27-4-6
It is unlawful to take any nongame fish by minnow seines unless:
1) The fish is is both less than 5 inches and taken for noncommercial purposes.
2) The fish is taken water that is not not trout waters.
The 1st "and" is obviously an inclusive "and" establishing a co-condition that the fish is both 5 inches or less and not for commercial purposes. The second "and" with the "except" clause appears to explicitly designate it as a exclusive "and", making it independent of the first two conditions.
Hence, in part the relevant meaning could be be summed up as: "It is lawful to seine nongame fish in waters that are not designated trout waters". This would also mean that paraphrase 2) above only applies to designated trout waters. Contextually weird, but the opposing interpretation is just as weird in the context of deciphering intended meaning. Obviously all relevant laws and regulations external to this code section still apply.
In most circumstances I can make informed judgments on what limits I should adhere to, and have some limits that I independently impose on myself. But should I find myself in certain situations I cannot even make out the intent of this code segment, which I would appreciate comments on, but I am more interested in how a court might reasonably interpret it. Does this ambiguity justify a rule of lenity? If I take legal risks I at least want to have some clue what those risk are.
Georgia
My hobby includes photography of native fish, which often involves capture and release. Generally with the least intrusive possible capture techniques. But certain events have lead me to attempt dot all my legal i's in my activities. I have no impending legal charges.
This concerns a specific use of "and" in the law. When I look up the legal meaning of "and" it is deemed irrational, like the square root of -2 is to math. However, in most cases the intended meaning is obvious and honored as such by the law. Yet in the case below I do not not how to parse how it was intended or how I can reasonably expect it to be interpreted in a court.
I have trimmed the text to the relevant text. The full section can be seen here:
Redirecting
Georgia Code Section § 27-4-6
The "and except" is where the trouble is. The way I parse a paraphrase of this is:
It is unlawful to take any nongame fish by minnow seines unless:
1) The fish is is both less than 5 inches and taken for noncommercial purposes.
2) The fish is taken water that is not not trout waters.
The 1st "and" is obviously an inclusive "and" establishing a co-condition that the fish is both 5 inches or less and not for commercial purposes. The second "and" with the "except" clause appears to explicitly designate it as a exclusive "and", making it independent of the first two conditions.
Hence, in part the relevant meaning could be be summed up as: "It is lawful to seine nongame fish in waters that are not designated trout waters". This would also mean that paraphrase 2) above only applies to designated trout waters. Contextually weird, but the opposing interpretation is just as weird in the context of deciphering intended meaning. Obviously all relevant laws and regulations external to this code section still apply.
In most circumstances I can make informed judgments on what limits I should adhere to, and have some limits that I independently impose on myself. But should I find myself in certain situations I cannot even make out the intent of this code segment, which I would appreciate comments on, but I am more interested in how a court might reasonably interpret it. Does this ambiguity justify a rule of lenity? If I take legal risks I at least want to have some clue what those risk are.
