Precision and breadth are independent dimensions of any legal rule

Evidence

A court concerned with not deciding too much but also concerned with giving guidance might, for example, make a decision containing a precise but narrow rule. The Supreme Court might still have specified, as in Miranda, close to the exact words that a warning would have to contain, but might have limited, as it did not, the cases to which those words would have to be given to a narrow class of police interrogations or to a narrow class of crimes. In such case, it would have selected an approach to rulemaking that was on the rules end of the rules-standards continuum but on the narrow end of the broad-narrow one. And in doing so, it would have done something quite different from what was done in Miranda, where the Court set forth a rule that was, like the class of insects, both broad and precise. — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 370

Categorization

• XREF: Provides a two-axis framework (precise-vague, broad-narrow) that generalizes to evaluating any regulatory or policy instrument. — connects to: Legal directives range from radically open-ended standards to extraordinarily specific rules — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 342; Legal rules intentionally incorporate arbitrary detail to maximize certainty and predictability. — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 534; Precision in legal-method measurement has limits beyond which it becomes absurd. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 447

Broader Connections

• Precision in legal-method measurement has limits beyond which it becomes absurd. #complicates (0.55) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 447
• Legal rules intentionally incorporate arbitrary detail to maximize certainty and predictability. #complicates (0.50) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 534