# Letter of the law

`kaal:entity:letter-of-the-law`

**Status.** derived

This node is assembled mechanically from the 3 claims that carry the concept tag `letter-of-the-law`. It is a roster of what the corpus says under this term. It is **not** an adjudicated definition: no single statement here has been ruled canonical, and no first-appearance call has been made. Read the claims and judge for yourself.

## Every claim under this term

3 claims across 2 works, 2021 to 2021.

**2021**

- [3782192-014](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782192-014) [mechanism/argued] *(failure mode)* -- When the letter of the law becomes more important than the spirit of the law, internal competition for power makes the winning strategy to push behavior to the limit of what is acceptable.
  > When the letter of the law is more important than the spirit of the law, then internal competition for power within the hierarchy reveals the best strategy is to push your behavior to the limit of what is acceptable.
  Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Introduction to Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782192
- [3782192-016](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782192-016) [failure/argued] *(failure mode)* -- No static set of logical rules can ever succeed in preventing corruption, which is the ultimate problem with relying on letter of the law governance instead of spirit of the law governance.
  > The ultimate problem with relying on letter-of-the-law governance over spirit-of-the- law governance is that no static set of logical rules can ever succeed in preventing corruption.
  Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Introduction to Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782192
- [3782193-012](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782193-012) [mechanism/argued] *(failure mode)* -- When a law is written down rigorously, specifying precisely what is acceptable and unacceptable, competition obliges people to find the most efficient behavior available inside those rules, which is typically behavior located right at the boundary of what is permissible.
  > When a law is written down rigorously, specifying precisely what is acceptable and not acceptable, people are obligated by competition to find the most efficient behavior possible within those rules.
  Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Historical Sketches of Centralization vs. Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782193

## Verify

Every claim above resolves to a record carrying a verbatim source quote, the sha256 of the source PDF, and a preformatted citation. Nothing here asks to be taken on trust.

    curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/entities/letter-of-the-law.md | sha256sum

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of this entity node. Its sha256 is the content hash.