Judge in California rules that bees can legally be fish

[Plasmodesmata]

Presented without comment.

www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/california-bees-fish-endangered-species-b2092553.html

What has this got to do with feminism?

Bumble bees are at risk. The existing legislation should have been more widely drawn but has been extended judicially. That sometimes happens when black letter law isn't keeping up with changing circumstances.

Seems like an excellent decision.

Does anybody think that the bees actually are fish? Or have become fish because the court said so?

You can call a cat a fish, but it will not swim. - Brutus (Rome)

It's a legal fiction. No one actually believes bees are fish unless they are delusional. I would say some interesting analogies can be drawn here...

What is your point? Have you actually read the report and the reasoning behind it?

The concept of judicial interpretation allows for Common Law to adapt for changing times ( marital rape for example) and for statutory law to be interpreted by rules of interpretation- the literal rule, the golden rule, the mischief rule and the purposive approach. Here they are applying either the golden rule and/or the mischief rule to allow for vital protection of an endangered species.

Well I suppose I know what your point is - like the thread about "Bill's Taverns" - it's not a good look.

It is interesting that it shows that we can accept legal fictions and understand the underlying point of commonality. We can create a kind of abstraction. Like beavers as fish for the purposes of fasting laws.

And maybe that capacity to work with abstraction is part of the reason we can be bamboozled in some cases.

I think it can also raise the question, is this kind of legal fiction really a good practice, or does it have dangers attached to it?

Obviously in this case the legal fiction is good, because it saves bees. We're fucked without the bees.

What unintended consequences could result from this legal fiction? Giving bees the legal status of fish may be beneficial to the bees (and by extension to humanity) but will creating a legal fiction create problems for fish?

In the case of bees at least it is genuinely a good reason, but I don’t believe this is a good or democratic way to make law.

Its manipulative. The clear intention of defining fish was to include types of sea creature. The “right result” relied on judicial bias - judge knows like most people that bees need protection so is persuaded or wants to give the right result by the wrong means.

We are nothing without sound reasoning. The beavers are fish is a good example. By semantic fuckery we make it ok for starving people to eat available food on a particular day, when it’s the illogical and arbitrary rule that needs to go, and with that might come other logic-based gains. Instead legal semantics upholds the status quo.

I agree with Jelly. Let’s hope that a law doesn’t exist that allows a circumstance when fish can be killed with impunity and some arsehole argues that this includes bees and any invertebrates.

Sadly some people will probably end up thinking that bees are fish.

Sometimes the law is an ass, even if in this case an entirely well-meaning ass.

What DinoSphere said, really. The law should be able to protect creature which need protection without nonsensical fictions. Laws should be based on fact not fiction.

Yes, I think that the worry is that the practice will become problematic, this way of manipulating laws.

It's more problematic where you are talking about a democratic process as well. If there is a desire to protect bees, why not pass the appropriate legislation? If the political representatives won't do that, isn't the judge subverting the political process? In what other ways might that happen if people don't have a sense that it's problematic?

This isn't a legal fiction. You might want to read something with a bit more gravitas and depth than the Independent

www.courthousenews.com/appeals-court-finds-california-law-protects-bees/

www.courthousenews.com/appeals-court-finds-california-law-protects-bees/

Judges can and do make law, and from these reports it was a sensible interpretation of the statute.

www.courthousenews.com/battle-over-california-bee-protection-continues/

Sorry posted same link twice.

The unanswered question in the last two pieces it "where did the word 'fish' come from then, and why was it used?"

Are we looking at the result of a previous incomplete rewrite that left something inconsistent?

Why wasn't a new law written specifically to protect bees in their own right? The bees are endangered and essential for pollination. Are there agricultural groups/businesses trying to prevent the protection and survival of bees? I don't really understand.

The issue isn’t the judge’s decision. It’s the truly dreadful drafting of the original law, which apparently entirely forgot about insects.

the only parallel I can draw is that when agendas - not expertise - drive legislation, then unexpected consequences can happen.