Maybe it's because US folks are used to jusrisdiction mostly using a "letter of the law" approach which invites loophole seeking and exploitation, while EU jusrisdictions use a "spirit of the law" approach. Sounds like this guy's defense is based on missing that cultural difference, at least.
I don't know if it will take 30 years or 50, but my gut feeling is that "spirit of the law" is much much more tenuous than "letter of the law". Who knows if the US is metastable. Things have been going nuts with the legal system here but it is also 250 years old. Most european democracies are a much younger experiment (and france is on what, attempt #5? Maybe #6 if you count subsumption into the EU as an unrecognized, but fundamental change in political dynamics).
Maybe an expert in the history of "civil law" will chime in, but my guess is that the "spirit of the law" principle has been in the legal systems of continental Europe since ancient Rome.
Yes, particularly legal systems that derive from Roman law (France, Spain, Italy) rely more heavily on this concept than those that derive from English Common law.
There's a saying I've heard somewhere, in England everything is allowed unless it is prohibited, in Germany everything is prohibited unless it is allowed and in France everything is allowed even if it is prohibited.
I guess I should have been clear that I meant stability + a democratic/republican system that preserves civil liberties, not stability with respect to the continuity of governments in the absolute sense.
To add with common law systems, we also can completely ignore the law. The state can as well just because there are so many laws. So stupid laws like "you can't chain a donkey to a tree with a wheelbarrow" are often ignore because the culture has just changed significantly.
I don't really like this "letter of the law" v "spirit of the law" distinction. "Spirit of the law" means open to interpretation. It is important in any environment for people to be clear how to operate within it, and if any of that is depends on intuition and interpretation, that amounts to a bigger loophole than any carefully examined technicality. The distinction then becomes not what loopholes to exploit but who gets to exploit them. With a "letter of the law" approach it takes a way the ability for arbiters to selectively interpret rules and puts the onus on the engineers of the system to be more careful and thoughtful in creating the environment.
If I can create a Ricardian compiler that can deterministically interpret human language and apply it to machine behavior, maybe the solution is to raise the standards we expect of those that craft our laws. "Spirit of the law" seems to be a cop out excusing sloppy lawmaking and leaving the door open for selective enforcement.
Nah, some European systems can be very much “letter of the law” too. It’s more of a political thing, typically (how many people are exploiting this, and are they rich/famous/powerful enough to be troublesome?). This guy is an outsider to the system he exploited, so the system will throw the book at him.
I think this is the most accurate answer. If he was white guy from the right family, he would be a hero for exposing flaws in the financial legal systems. But he is son of brown immigrants, doesn't sound like he had any high level connections, so he is the villain.
I don't think it particularly has anything to do with his color. He isn't a member of the banking class in Europe and he humiliated them by bringing press to the loopholes they've created (deliberately or otherwise) so they're going to make an example out of him.
