Over the past week, I have been listening to The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith on my way to and from work. This is not a fast-paced thriller, and it doesn't grab you like The Da Vinci Code. It is a leisurely stroll through Botswana, with an expert guide.

Last night, I laughed out loud at a scene in which the protagonist, Mma Precious Ramotswe (head of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency), was attempting to procure the address of a pensioner's widow from a government bureau. The man behind the counter denied her request for the address, stating that it was against the rules. Mma Ramotswe sized up the situation and concluded that there was no sense in trying to convince the man that her request was reasonable, that the rules were not really intended to cover her situation, because stupid people cannot make nuanced distinctions of that sort. As a result, they become sticklers for the rules.

She eventually overcomes his objections by creating confusion about the rule. She pretends to cite the rules manual, chapter and verse, and asserts that the prohibition governs only the names of pensioners, not their addresses. Of course, she ultimately succeeds in confusing the hapless clerk and gets her address.

This reminded me of a parking ticket that I paid last week. The University of Wisconsin Traffic Control Office fined me $40 for parking behind the law school on the Saturday after Christmas (December 27) at 5:00 pm. That my official parking spot is a 10-minute walk from the law school, that I was transporting three large bags of books to my office, and that I timed the visit as I did to avoid the possibility of disruption were all lost on the enforcement officer. And the person who reviewed my appeal. A rule is a rule, after all.

It may seem a bit unseemly for a law professor to be complaining about law enforcement in this way, but we law professors can be an ornery bunch. Rules often seem like wonderful tools for social control, but rules rarely regulate behavior in exactly the way we want. That is, they almost inevitably penalize in cases where a penalty is not desirable (overinclusive), or they fail to reach cases that they should (underinclusive). Sometimes, the same rule is both overinclusive and underinclusive. As you might expect, rules tend to be modified repeatedly (see, for example, the tax code), but this is more a game of cat and mouse than progressive evolution.

We also rely to varying degrees on prosecutorial discretion (e.g., the parking officer could have elected to let my transgression pass, but she didn't). But this is problematic, too, because prosecutors will be biased (nothing personal ... we all are). In some instances (e.g., blacks and the death penalty), the results can be very troubling.

Regulation is a tough business, and Mma Ramotswe's skill in manipulating the system captures nicely the advantage of being smart. Still, as my parking ticket illustrates, the bureaucrats do sometimes have their revenge.

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