{"id":666,"date":"2013-02-01T11:07:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T11:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=666"},"modified":"2013-02-01T11:07:46","modified_gmt":"2013-02-01T11:07:46","slug":"discretion-is-fractal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=666","title":{"rendered":"Discretion is Fractal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I made a presentation at the Leiden University conference<\/a> ‘Political Legitimacy and the Paradox of Regulation’ under the admittedly esoteric title ‘Discretion is Fractal’. Despite the title, my point is actually quite simple: one cannot continue to model,\u00a0conceptualize and measure (administrative or legal) discretion as a linear\u00a0phenomenon\u00a0because of the nested structure of legal norms which\u00a0exhibits\u00a0self-similarity at different levels of\u00a0observation. And, yes, this means that law is fractal<\/strong>, too. In the same way there is no definite answer to the question ‘how long is the coast of Britain<\/a>‘, there can be no answer to the question which legal code provides for more discretion, unless a common yardstick and level of observation is used (which requires an analytic reconstruction of the structure of the legal norms).
\nThe presentation tries to unpack some of the implications of the fractal nature of legal norms and proposes an alternative strategy for\u00a0measuring\u00a0discretion. Here is a\u00a0pdf<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0presentation which I hope makes some sense on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I made a presentation at the Leiden University conference ‘Political Legitimacy and the Paradox of Regulation’ under the admittedly esoteric title ‘Discretion is Fractal’. Despite the title, my point is actually quite simple: one cannot continue to model,\u00a0conceptualize and measure (administrative or legal) discretion as a linear\u00a0phenomenon\u00a0because of the nested structure of legal norms which\u00a0exhibits\u00a0self-similarity at different levels of\u00a0observation. And, yes, this means that law is fractal, too. In the same way there is no definite answer to the question ‘how long is the coast of Britain‘, there can be no answer to the question which legal code provides for more discretion, unless a common yardstick and level of observation is used (which requires an analytic reconstruction of the structure of the legal norms). The presentation tries to unpack some of the implications of the fractal nature of legal norms and proposes an alternative strategy for\u00a0measuring\u00a0discretion. Here is a\u00a0pdf\u00a0of the\u00a0presentation which I hope makes some sense on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[26,36],"tags":[62,185,275,338,378,392,406,548,623],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-aK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":689,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=689","url_meta":{"origin":666,"position":0},"title":"Bureaucrats as Policy-makers","date":"February 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone loves bitching about bureaucrats but few know what it is exactly that they do. Ed Page's new book 'Policies without Politicians' provides plenty of insights. 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But halfway through the second article I actually felt sick to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Humour"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=24","url_meta":{"origin":666,"position":4},"title":"The present and the future of academic publishing","date":"October 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Academic publishing remains one of the most mysterious industries to me even after being caught in its web for a while. 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