"Everything I Needed to Learn About Legisprudence I Learned by the Time I Was Nine "

This is kind of amusing; from the abstract:

[This story] starts with a proclamation by Mother, the Supreme Lawmaker, that "no food may be eaten outside the kitchen." What follows is a series of rulings by Judges--father, babysitter, ... etc.--who, using traditional tools of interpretation, eventually declare it to mean that all food may be eaten outside of the kitchen. Ultimately, the supreme lawmaker reacts and clarifies.

The piece is meant to demonstrate [inter alia] ... [that a]lthough the various tools seem perfectly reasonable individually, in the aggregate, they can lead to ridiculous results; [ e]ven when we agree that the ultimate results are ridiculous, it is sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly where the error occurred[, and t]he legislature can sometimes clean up after bad judicial opinions, but it often takes a long time..

Nice work by Hillel Levin.

HT: OK.