The Great Mental Models, Volume 3

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First annotation on Oct 22nd, 2025.

In many legal systems, each decision by a court becomes a bit of information that moves via a feedback loop into the stock of legal options to influence both how the system responds to future cases and how judges form future decisions. Each decision becomes legal precedent. In The Legal Analyst, Ward Farnsworth explains that in making decisions courts will consider "what incentives people will have after the case is over."[6] Courts need to be careful. If they compensate for a wrong now, they could create a climate that increases the chances of that wrong happening again.
Criminal law has to work at the margins in terms of deterring unwanted behavior. This means any additional (incremental) crime must be met with appropriate punishment. For example, if a criminal "faces execution for the crime he already has committed, he pays no additional price for adding a murder to it."[11] We don't want thieves to get a death sentence, or there would be no incentive for them not to kill people in the course of their thievery. Farnsworth explains, "The designers of criminal penalties have to worry about preserving marginal deterrence—scaling penalties so that there is always something more to fear by doing a little worse."[12] In essence, this creates a balancing feedback loop that responds with appropriate consequences depending on the severity of the crime.