Though judges would still have discretion to modify those awards, backers said that the provision would take much of the uncertainty out of divorce proceedings, where a patchwork of case law has resulted in widely inconsistent awards.
In a kind of "reflective adjustment", they fit the new problem into a patchwork of past case decisions, comparing cases in order to reason about the legal significance of the relevant similarities and differences.
Eschewing a "best person for the job" ethic, its own parliamentary candidate selection process has become a mad patchwork of special cases and interventions, to the Kafkaesque point that every other candidate is a special case.
Everyone agrees that some kind of legislation is needed to make sense of the existing patchwork of laws and court cases on electronic surveillance.
The Environmental Protection Agency immediately promised new national standards governing the disposal of coal ash to replace a patchwork of uneven — and in many cases weak — state regulations.
One proposal, favored by public-interest groups and by agency scientists, would replace a patchwork of uneven — and in many cases weak — state regulations with new national standards.
It is, in most cases, a patchwork of painfully and barely functioning laws, like a bone that knits crooked simply because it was never set properly.
"The alternative is to pursue a patchwork of regulations that, in some cases, could arbitrarily ban energy exploration and damage the state's largest industry, largest employers, and largest taxpayers".
The cases have come from a patchwork of federal agencies, state officials and shareholder suits, some of which have been resolved in multibillion-dollar settlements.
Not surprisingly, then, domestic abuse cases have been settled in a patchwork of decisions.
