
Chinese farmer 'studies law for 16 years' to defeat dumping of hazardous waste - EndXA
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/chinese-farmer-wang-englin-study-law-16-years-chemicals-corporation-qinghua-group-dump-chemical-a7566911.html
======
an_ko
I think it's really fucked up that people have to _study law_. I'm expected to
live by a complex set of rules that only a few understand well enough to
reliably navigate, where any transgression might ruin the rest of my life?

Almost nobody I know has even _read_ any law. Whenever I have, it has been a
frustrating exercise in deciphering jargon and ridiculously long sentences. It
leaves me a modest degree of terrified to do anything, because everything is
probably illegal by some interpretation of some corner of some strange grammar
used in some paragraph or other somewhere.

~~~
overcast
Don't kill, lie, cheat or steal. That will pretty much cover most of it. You
don't need to be a lawyer to function in society.

~~~
noonespecial
Or, you know, ship a lobster in the wrong kind of container.

[https://www.nacdl.org/Document/OvercriminalizationVictimAbne...](https://www.nacdl.org/Document/OvercriminalizationVictimAbnerSchoenwetter-
CaseSum)

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Or buy a book an Amazon. UK people where prosecuted for having 'The Anarchist
Cookbook'

[https://theintercept.com/2017/10/28/josh-walker-anarchist-
co...](https://theintercept.com/2017/10/28/josh-walker-anarchist-cookbook-
terrorism-act-uk/)

------
yorwba
Reading the linked report by the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution
Victims [1], it's clear that the problem was not with the law being so complex
it took 16 years to understand, but that the agencies tasked with enforcing
the law were trying very hard to shirk their duty and stalling him at every
opportunity. The People's Daily article [2] recounts a nice anecdote about
getting rebuffed when requesting land use maps from the responsible agency,
which he countered by quoting the law granting him access from memory, which
apparently scared the agency employee enough to hand him the maps.

[1]
[http://www.clapv.org/english_lvshi/ZhiChiAnJian_Content.asp?...](http://www.clapv.org/english_lvshi/ZhiChiAnJian_Content.asp?id=61&title=Support%20cases&titlecontent=PD_zhichianjian&lei1=20)

[2]
[http://jx.people.com.cn/n2/2017/0203/c355185-29659118.html](http://jx.people.com.cn/n2/2017/0203/c355185-29659118.html)

~~~
icsllaf
Honestly, a good amount of law and politics is knowing what you can or cannot
do. It's not that law is complex it's that dealing with people who know law,
or people that know that you don't know about law is complex.

You can see it when people with the basic understanding of police interactions
can avoid so much illegal stuff happening if they just know when to say no.

------
retrocryptid
both my father and a dear friend gave me some great advice... "if you can, go
to law school. even if you're not a practicing lawyer, it's very useful to
know how they think."

one friend commented "law school teaches you about the operating system of
society"

~~~
crimsonalucard
Operating systems are suppose to assist the user. In this and most cases the
law is a system of oppression. 16 years is a travesty. Economics and science
are the true operating systems of society.

You go to law school to learn security exploits.

~~~
lone_haxx0r
Using security exploits is non-coercive. Law is coercive.

You go to law school to learn how people convince other people to force other
people to do things.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Why people follow law is not part of what you learn in law school. That is an
anthropological phenomenon that has to do with culture, society and biology.

What you learn in law school is less fundamental and more specific to the
system at hand. You learn contracts, property, criminal law, constitutional
law, legal methods, civil procerude... torts...

You learn the specifics so that the system can be exploited.

If you think people who study law have some deep insight on the true nature of
civilizations and the rules that humans operate under you are completely
wrong.

Questions like which system is better? Communism or capitalism? Dictatorship
or Democracy? Are not what you study in law school.

Remember law school is about security exploits.

~~~
ajdlinux
Putting aside the question of what they do and don't teach in law school -
over in my part of the world, where, as is normal in the British Commonwealth,
law is normally studied at an undergraduate level, it's fairly standard for
law students to double major in the humanities or social sciences, where those
questions do indeed get asked from a non-legal and more anthropological and
cultural perspective.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Well double majoring is different right? I'm sure if someone wanted to double
major in physics and law they wouldn't be getting the social science part.

------
aaron695
This is fake news....

Not hard to see, you can even read the original article in google translate,
which seems to be their only source and they still messed it up.

The case was 16 years start to finish, not him studying law.

He used a lawyer..... "Wang Enlin began work to protect his rights in 2006 and
received assistance from the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims
(CLAPV) in 2007" [1]

Sure you just want a meme to make you happy, but Reddit did this story years
ago. And they have new memes that are untrue and fun there now.

The more real story here is still kinda cool [2]. But this isn't close to the
truth.

[1]
[https://ipen.org/sites/default/files/documents/Case%20Study%...](https://ipen.org/sites/default/files/documents/Case%20Study%20Report%20Qihua%202015r.pdf)
[2]
[http://www.clapv.org/english_lvshi/ZhiChiAnJian_Content.asp?...](http://www.clapv.org/english_lvshi/ZhiChiAnJian_Content.asp?id=61&title=Support%20cases&titlecontent=PD_zhichianjian&lei1=20)

~~~
vincvinc
Why was this comment was marked dead? I am "vouch"ing it for now because I
have read Wang Enlin's story a long time ago, and though a cool story, I have
doubts about this version of the story by the Independent to be a good
representation.

~~~
yorwba
The account was banned in 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691778)

If a comment is marked as [dead] but not [flagged] it was killed
automatically, usually for reasons related to the account, not the specific
comment in question.

------
rb808
I'm genuinely surprised you can take a Chinese state-owned corporation to
court. Does China really have environmental laws which regular people can sue
over?

~~~
threwawasy1228
So, you would be surprised, Chinese law itself is actually extremely
comprehensive and large. I would argue that Chinese law is nearly identical in
scope to most Western law. There are laws on the books enshrining freedoms,
and many which allow the people to hold the state accountable. All this with
the humongous caveat that courts and judges will often not enforce laws as
they are written, so just because China might have stringent environmental
protections on its books, getting a judge who will actually allow such cases
is difficult.

The law is structured in such a way that the judges and courts have a great
deal of freedom and discretion about which laws to enforce when, and can
decide not to enforce laws at specific times. This is seen as a strength of
the system, in that it prevents a lot of obtuse bickering over minor details
of legal interpretation. The judge can do maneuvers like saying "The spirit
and intent of the law was this, doesn't matter what it actually says" and this
is legal. So yes the Chinese state probably does have protections for this
sort of thing, but they probably never enforce any of them because of rampant
abuse.

~~~
ourlordcaffeine
>and many which allow the people to hold the state accountable

The thing is, if you try to use your right to petition Beijing, for example,
you will be harassed and may be arrested.

I followed the story on weibo of a parent who petitioned Beijing for better
discipline in schools after bullies took out her son's eye. She was followed
by agents, prevented from taking her son to hospital appointments in the city
and forced to sign a "confession" that she was a dissident.

So yes, you have the right, but if you use it, you will be targeted. So stop
spreading this "China is not so bad, it has the same freedoms as in the west!"
bs.

~~~
yorwba
Right after the part you quoted:

> All this with the humongous caveat that courts and judges will often not
> enforce laws as they are written

Please don't use selective quotations to misrepresent the viewpoints of other
commenters.

~~~
ourlordcaffeine
Harassment and arbitrary arrest are not quite the same as "judges will often
not enforce laws as they are written"

Seems like you've deliberately misinterpreted my comment

~~~
yorwba
No, I'm just disagreeing with the parts of it directed at the commenter you
were responding to. (Edit: basically just _So stop spreading this "China is
not so bad, it has the same freedoms as in the west!" bs. _)

------
skizm
Serious question: is there any publicly available place I can go and simply
read all the laws? Obviously knowing the letter of the law won't let me know
how to apply it in all situations, but I literally have no idea how to
discover what laws I'm supposed to follow, besides asking a lawyer.

~~~
quanticle
The Cornell Law College has the entire US Code published on its website:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text)

~~~
skizm
Neat, thanks! Curious though, where does Cornell get the source material /
wording from? When something changes, how are they informed? Does the
government keep a master copy somewhere?

~~~
bjourne
They subscribe to the US government's gazette:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Register](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Register)
Each US state also has a corresponding gazette.

~~~
skizm
Cool, thanks!

------
aklemm
I’ve asked before, but never got a good idea. How should a lay person best
understand law without becoming a lawyer? What do we read? Where is a good
course?

~~~
seereadhack
The Legal Analyst by Ward Farnsworth is an enjoyable introduction.
[https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Analyst-Toolkit-Thinking-
about/...](https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Analyst-Toolkit-Thinking-
about/dp/0226238350)

The Law Student's Toolkit class on Coursera from Yale's Ian Ayers covers some
similar ground. [https://www.coursera.org/learn/law-
student/](https://www.coursera.org/learn/law-student/)

------
stephsmithio
This is a great story. If only AdChoices would stop dumping all over the site,
so I could read it to the end.

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clSTophEjUdRanu
Off-topic, but that time lapse of Beijing smog makes me angry.

------
wpdev_63
Not a lawyer, in any country, but I assume _chinese law_ is whatever the
government feel likes at that time. Can't imagine their law is like anything
in the west.

