As a result, thousands of people will serve longer prison terms.
  • randomaccount43543@lemmy.world
    62·
    8 months ago

    Right! I feel like I’m going crazy because I don’t see how can you interpret it the other way!

    lower courts were sharply divided on the vital question of whether “and” bundles the conditions—as in, you don’t have (A), don’t have (B), and don’t have ©—which would mean a defendant who lacked any one of these conditions would be eligible for relief. The alternative reading, advocated by the Justice Department, holds that “and” really means “or”—that a defendant who met even one of the conditions would not be eligible for relief

    The reporter seems to be getting this totally wrong. It’s like he is saying the exact opposite of what I understand. From my point of view:

    If a defendant would be elegible for relief if he lacked any one of the conditions, that is actually interpreting that AND means OR.

    If a defendant would be eligible for relief if he lacked all of the conditions, that is interpreting that AND means AND.

    • ZaktorEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      If a defendant would be elegible for relief if he lacked any one of the conditions, that is actually interpreting that AND means OR.

      When you move the “not” to the inner terms, as you did in this reformulation, it flips the ANDs and ORs. That’s expected. The original, with the “not” on the outside, has the and/or flip in the majority interpretation.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan's_laws

      • not (A or B) = (not A) and (not B)
      • not (A and B) = (not A) or (not B)
    • CapeWearingAeroplane
      1·
      8 months ago

      Note the crucial difference between writing this as an enumerated list, and writing it as a continuous sentence.

      In the former case (used here) the “xyz is not” distributes such that each point on the list can be read as a complete sentence, giving your (correct) interpretation.

      What seems to confuse a lot of people is that if you write “xyz is not A, B, and C”, the “not” no longer distributes the same way, and (A, B, and C) is read as a single condition, giving the alternate (incorrect) interpretation.