CS 111: Program Design I Lecture 13: Supreme Court Basics, Files

Transcription

1 CS 111: Program Desig I Lecture 13: Supreme Court Basics, Files Robert H. Sloa & Richard Warer Uiversity of Illiois at Chicago October 6, 2016 THE US SUPREME COURT (CONTINUED) 1

2 Approximate Political Compositio Justice Age Appoited by Vacat (Atoi Scalia) (79) Roald Reaga Athoy Keedy 80 Roald Reaga Clarece Thomas 68 George H. W. Bush Ruth Bader Gisburg 83 Bill Clito Stephe Breyer 78 Bill Clito Joh G. Roberts 61 George W. Bush Samuel A. Alito, Jr. 66 George W. Bush Soia Sotomayor 62 Barack Obama Elea Kaga 56 Barack Obama What Are Supreme Court Cases Like? A good way to aswer that is with a Federal district court case, US v. Escamilla. q Simpler, easy to uderstad, ad makes the poit. The case ivolves a accidetal killig at a research statio o a islad of Arctic ice. As you hear about case, remember you kow eough about islads of Arctic ice ad firearms to uderstad ad evaluate the case. What do the Justices kow about curret techology? 2

3 US v. Escamilla Escamilla killed Berie Lightsey, his coworker at a research statio located o T-3, a floatig islad of ice i the Arctic Ocea. The trial court held that Escamilla was crimially egliget i killig Lightsey ad covicted him of ivolutary maslaughter. The Law A perso acts [crimially] egligetly whe he should be aware of a substatial ad ujustifiable risk that... will result from his coduct. The risk must be of such a ature ad degree that the actor s failure to perceive it, cosiderig the ature ad purpose of his coduct ad the circumstaces kow to him, ivolves a gross deviatio from the stadard of care that a reasoable perso would observe i the actor s situatio. Model Peal Code, 2.02(2)(d). The geerality ad lack of guidace is typical. 3

4 Balacig Competig Moral Cocers Reasoable to get the rifle? q Escamilla had reaso to thik Porky ad Lightsey might attack with deadly force, q Armig himself could deter a attack through a display of superior force, ad meet force with force. q But: have avoided a attack by simply givig up the wie. q But: o law eforcemet o T-3 So o recovery of property or compesatio, o protectio agaist cotiued demads. Reasoable to Poit the Rifle? Was it reasoable to poit a loaded rifle with at Lightsey? q Poitig the rifle made the threat to use it more credible ad so cotributed more effectively to deterrece through a show of superior force. q Should he have uloaded it? 4

5 Reasoable to Release the Safety? Releasig the safety esured that deadly force was immediately available to repel deadly force. But was the threat that serious? The Court s Decisio It would seem plai that what is egliget or grossly egliget coduct i the Easter District of Virgiia may ot be egliget or grossly egliget o T-3 whe it is remembered that T-3 has o goverig authority, o police force, is relatively iaccessible from the rest of the world, lacks medical facilities ad the dwelligs thereo lack locks -- i short, that abset self-restrait o the part of those statioed o T-3 ad effectiveess of the group leader, T-3 is a place where o recogized meas of law eforcemet exist ad each ma looks to himself for the immediate eforcemet of his rights. 5

6 Factual Detail Notice the factual detail of our discussio. q Also characteristic of US Supreme Court cases. You eed to kow ad realize the relevace of a umber of details about rifles ad Artic ice research statios. The same is true of cases ivolvig techology. But the ecessary backgroud kowledge is ot widespread. Difficult Moral Balacig Decidig Escamilla requires balacig protectig yourself ad your property agaist the respect for the life of others. Such balacig is characteristic of US Supreme Court cases. Techology cases also ivolve balacig issues, as we have see i our discussios. 6

7 Fidig Patters i Cases The aalysis of large databases of court decisios is a icreasigly popular ad importat way to ivestigate how the court balaces moral issues. You ca fid revealig patters. Why was the Escamilla T-3 case i Federal Court? A. Homicide is geerally a federal crime heard i federal court B. Escamilla ad Lightsey were citizes of two differet states C. T-3 was outside of all 50 states ad the District of Columbia 7

8 FILES CONTINUED Readig a file: From last lecture >>> file = ope("justices.txt", "r") >>> prit(file.read()) These are the justices of the Supreme Court as of March 2016 Athoy M. Keedy, Clarece Thomas, Ruth Bader Gisburg, Stephe G. Bryer, Joh G. Roberts, Samuel A. Alito, Soia Sotomayor, Elea Kaga Ad the: >>> prit(ewfile.read(4)) Gives? A. Thes B. Etire file C. The D. E. No clue 8

9 (Text) File readig, a little more slowly Recall text file = sequece of lies Lie = sequece of characters up to ad icludig the special ewlie character \ q q (Special case: probably last set of characters at ed of file will work okay eve if text file does't ed with ewlie as it should.) (How could we fid out?) Ca iterate over text file referece fileref = ope("afile.txt", "r") for lie i fileref: # process each lie process lie as we wish i this block rest of program fileref.close() Typically easiest way to read text file, all other thigs beig equal 9

10 Also: read fileref.read() returs whole gosh dar text file's cotets as sigle strig fileref.read(umber) reads (the ext) umber characters (ewlie couts) as strig read advaces place i file we're readig from After you've read all the way to ed, read will retur empty strig '' Readig a text file: more methods fileref.readlie(): reads ext lie of file ad returs it as strig (up to ad icludig ewlie) fileref.readlies() returs etire file, as a list of oe-lie strigs 10

11 Ope whe uusual characters i file Ope has a optioal third argumet, specifyig a character ecodig Irrelevat most of the time But you may eed it if you are workig with Arabic, Hebrew, Madari, Russia, etc. Or legal materials usig the sectio symbol f = ope('scdb_2016_01_justicecetered_citatio.csv', "r", ecodig='iso ') Structured text files: CSV I 2016, ofte wat to commuicate betwee all sorts of differet electroic tools CSV (comma-separated values) is format used by Excel, ad very commo for exchagig large collectios of data Pytho has a csv module ad it has csv.writer() ad csv.reader() fuctios that could help you q We wo t cover those i this course 11