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Gastogh comments on A sense of logic - Less Wrong
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If people think the structure is watertight and that the is argument valid because of that, maybe pointing out the structural flaw in clear terms would get through to them. Specifically, this one's called a fallacy of four terms, though it's in disguise; the word law is used to mean human-designed law in the major premise and any kind of law in the minor premise. The fact that the word also occurs in the phrase natural laws adds to the fun, too.
If going into even deeper detail might help, linguistics has a name for this sort of phenomenon: autohyponymy. It's when a word has a kind of "default general sense" in addition to one or more specific meanings, which occasionally leads to mix-ups. In this case, we have the hypernonym law (=all kinds of laws) and its hyponym law (=piece of human legislation). Another set of examples of the concept of autohyponymy would be the hyperonym dog (=dog of either gender) and its hyponyms dog (=male dog) and bitch (=female dog).
Do you find stating it like that rather than saying "fallacy of equivocation" is more effective in getting your objection across? Edit: Because my experience is that pointing out the fallacy (by whatever name) is seldom effective.
Tell that person that feathers are light, what is light cannot be dark, therefore feathers cannot be dark.
This is my favorite response so far.
I've no idea, really; I have little experience trying to explain fallacies to anyone as part of addressing their points. If by "stating it like that" you mean the second paragraph, it was an attempt to cover more bases in case simply naming the fallacy didn't work.
I guess it depends on the audience - if we're explaining this to the archetypal Man Taken Off The Street, the simplest thing would be to just point out the differences in what law (in this case) is used to mean and forget any and all mentions of theory, fallacies and categorical syllogisms. I proposed giving a name to the error and adding detail because of this part of the OP:
My idea was that if someone thinks to cite structural soundness as support for their argument, it might imply they're sufficiently well-versed in the field that name-dropping the fallacy actually has a chance of working.
Thanks. I will have to remember that term in future.