Judge disagreement shows legal rules alone cannot determine case outcomes.

Evidence

Yet if judicial decision making were always so simple, a computer with all the pertinent legal rules stored in its memory could fill the position of a judge. More to the point, judges who knew the law would always agree on how cases should be decided. In fact, they often disagree. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2519

Categorization

• XREF: This is the classic anti-formalist argument underlying legal realism and, later, attitudinal studies of judging.
• SEED: Article angle: if the rules sufficed, judging would be computation — what the persistence of dissent reveals about law’s indeterminacy.