Rules
As law serves important social functions in most farmer and industrial societies, law will almost certainly continue in the em world. As the em world is more competitive, when enforcement is insufficient law will select not only for honest success, but also for cheating to create apparent success. Thus the em world should be all the more eager to choose institutions of law and its enforcement to ensure that cheaters do not prosper. To the extent that em law continues to invoke the concept of the expectations or beliefs of a “reasonable person,” that person is likely to be an em. Also, we discussed in Chapter 10 , Rights section, the wide range of legal environments that might cover the creation of em copies. At the other end of life, it is much easier to determine the wishes of past ems. After all, ems who are archived or retired can be directly consulted about their wishes. For ems who are erased but have very close copies still living, those close copies could be consulted. Th e ability to read minds, even at shallow levels, can offer em law better ways to determine pain, intent, and lies. Archived copies of minds from just before a key event could be used to infer the intent and state of knowledge of ems at that key event. Spur split tests might be used to determine unconscious biases. More generally, wider surveillance makes it easier for ems to notice rule violations, and to identify guilty parties. Spurs can ensure privacy not only in legal advice, but also in law enforcement. For example, an isolated police spur could look in detail at arbitrary private data and then end quietly if it found no legal violation, revealing nothing to outsiders but that one fact. Some elements of law today can be understood as attempts to insulate legal decisions from coalition politics in the larger society. For example, rules of evidence prohibiting hearsay (i.e., indirect testimony) and statistical inferences about members of groups can be seen in this light, as can the habit of expunging juvenile records. As em clans may be even better at forming effective coalitions than are family clans today, em law may need to try harder to insulate legal decisions from political coalitions.