I don't really appreciate skirting "technicalities", especially in a precedent-setting legal decision. If the law is wrong (or even if the spirit/intent of the law does not apply here), she should win and the law should change or be struck down. I wouldn't mind if the judge decided "it's illegal to make someone who signed a lottery ticket with their real name not change to a trust and keep their name hidden." But I would mind if the judge decided "I feel sorry for her, in this one instance she can remain anonymous."
If you read any legal opinions in visible cases they are never just the judge feeling or not feeling sorry for the plaintiff (or defendant) and are deeply steeped in the law as written as well as precedent before even approaching making new precedent. Maybe a judge could comment but I’d venture they would almost avoid territory that would be ripe for appeal as much as possible.
Judges that aren't on specialized tribunals aren't expected to, and mostly don't, know the law (because it's quite impossible) - they rely on the Barristers to inform them, then get their clerks to do some digging to see if the briefs are on point. The higher up you go in the chain, the more clerk time they have to research and the more control they have over how long they take to put out their ruling.
Junior judges are more reticent to rock the boat - they have less resources, less understanding of how the judicial boards and other oversight mechanisms work, etc. Old greybeards generally stop caring - either about bothering to change things or about how 'safe' their ruling will be on appeal. The most active in tossing bad precedent out the window generally end up being the ones that get appointed to higher ranking courts.
>If the law is wrong (or even if the spirit/intent of the law does not apply here), she should win and the law should change or be struck down.
That's orthogonal. What you propose translates to that while the law is not changed (which can take decades in some cases) we should let people suffer rather than "skip technicalities" when we can.
How about sodomy laws (still present in some jurisdictions). Should they be imposed upon gay men until those laws change? And no biggie if people suffer in the meantime?
> That's orthogonal. What you propose translates to that while the law is not changed (which can take decades in some cases) we should let people suffer rather than "skip technicalities" when we can.
You misunderstand me. I am saying if the law is wrong, she should win (and so should everyone else, every time, while the law is wrong). I am also saying if the law is wrong, it should change or be struck down. I am not saying she should lose until the law is changed.
By making it easier to change the official winner future people might suffer much more if it becomes easier to challenge an award.
Just as a practical matter, people are more likely to litigate an award _before_ the award is disbursed. "Dumb" rules that require an entity to disburse funds to a specific named person contingent upon some simple formality have actually arisen because more robust rules that carefully balance interests and facts (including fraud) can create too much litigation. Those more robust rules are important to keep, but sometimes simply deferring a challenge until after disbursement can cut down on the amount and overall cost of litigation. For one thing it completely removes one of the 3 parties; in this case the agency administering the lottery.
For example, there are rules (legislative and court made law) for things like life insurance policies and bank accounts that require the entities disbursing the funds to pay directly to a named beneficiary, even if ownership of those funds could be and actually is being challenged in, say, probate court. And you can't circumvent the rules by asking a court to change the named beneficiary; that would defeat the whole purpose of the rule, and courts normally won't do that even if they know that, ultimately, the challenger will ultimately be given the funds.
That's the question here, whether the rules being challenged here are the kind of rules intended to prevent litigation that ropes in the agency administering the lottery. If so and the court makes an exception here, it would be difficult if not impossible to prevent other scenarios where challengers try to force the agency to change the name of the winner rather than directly suing the winner after disbursement. The former is often less costly for the challenger and could easily invite more litigation that challenges rightful ownership of a lottery ticket.
I think this should set a precedent, and I am quite confident that it wouldn’t cause any problems other than the lottery being upset about losing publicity.
I think that's reasonable and would not be surprised if the judge says that the harm placed on the individual by the state just for participating is too large, legally. But I would also not be surprised if public's right to know trumps all.
I'm not sure what the compelling public interest is in knowing the name of the person who won the lottery. I suppose there's some argument for transparency to better protect against, say, relatives of lottery officials regularly winning. But I presume there are other safeguards in place to check that things are run on the up and up.
The state gets their substantial cut--both through the lottery itself and through taxes--either way. Without having looked into the history of lottery practices, I'm pretty unconvinced that winners need to be outed to collect their winnings.
We should ask our judges not to legislate from the bench by giving narrowly construed decisions contrary to the written law that apply to nobody else. Either every lottery winner in the state is legally right to remain anonymous and collect (be it via changing to a trust whilst remaining anonymous or however) or every one is not. This is not some extreme example and I can definitely see this coming up again.
>We should ask our judges not to legislate from the bench
Why not? This is a core facet of their job.
The tug of war in law between flexibility and certainty is nothing new.
In this case you've state the outcome should be either all entitled to anonymity or all restricted from anonymity. Why are those the only two options?
Say sociological research shows: 1) people conceal lottery earnings from spouses in the context of divorce with tremendous regularity, and 2) people who obtain lottery earnings are 10x more likely to be killed by distant, financially-at-risk relatives. Should a lottery winner with 3 violent felons with debts in his family be dealt with in the same manner as an upper middle class winner in the middle of a divorce?
This is why our judges get to tinker with our rules. Because real life has edge cases.
>This is why our judges mostly do not get to tinker with the rules.
They mostly don't tinker, not because they aren't allowed, but because rules are designed to capture the base case, so most cases are anticipated by the rules.
This is why most reviews and reporters do not list every banal dispute.
Very few people talk about this, but there are two categorically different forms of judicial activism - one where judges carve out from themselves or the executive or legislature, powers (usually regulatory) from whole cloth. And one where judges restrict the power of the state (e.g. "the state cannot arrest someone for burning the flag, whether or not such a law exists").
Which one would you suppose a ruling on this falls under?
> Which one would you suppose a ruling on this falls under?
The latter hopefully/clearly. But I don't consider it activism to uniformly apply your interpretation of the law. The activism I was concerned about is narrow application in this supposedly "exceptional" circumstance. Is that a "third form" or is it an extension of the first except they carved it out for someone else?
