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Legislating the Transcendental: Von Hirsch's Proportionality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives was persuaded by a mathematician (of sorts) to entertain a bill “introducing a new mathematical truth”. The new truth was a method, or more precisely methods, for computing the value of π. Since π is a transcendental number the methods could at best have achieved an approximation. In fact they yielded several inaccurate values, one as wild as 4. The legislators were doubtful enough to refer the bill to a committee (the Committee on Canals) and, when this reported favourably, to the Committee on Temperance. Eventually they had the sense to defer it sine die.
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References
1 See Singmaster, David, “The Legal Values of Pi” in Mathematical Intelligencer, 1985, 7, 2, pp. 69ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 The convenient term used by Saunders, Trevor in Plato's Penal Code (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar
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5 See for example his Past or Future Crimes (Manchester 1986),Google Scholar ch. 5.
6 Loc. cit. note 5.
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14 Although in a later article (“Gauging Criminal Harm: a Living-Standard Analysis” (1991) 11 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, pp. 1–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar) he and Nils Jareborg appear to propose elaborate sub-divisions, it is not clear that they are meant to figure in proportionality scales.
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20 Not which is “fair” or “just”: simply “preferable”.
21 This is not inconsistent with the stipulation that Rawlsian man's chances of being incarnated as law-abiding or law-breaking are the same in both jurisdictions, since the effect of Benthambria's penal code might merely be to reduce the productivity, rather than the numbers, of law-breakers.
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23 Loc. cit. note 4 supra.