> I always marvel how our legal systems manage not to collapse given the imprecise language they use.
That's only surprising if you consider the language of laws to be of paramount importance. But generally, that's not the case. Most legal outcomes just come down to the discretion of police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, in descending order of prominence.
A lot of people, and probably especially programmers and engineers, think of the legal system as a formal system. It's quite common, when discussing some court case, or perhaps some unscrupulous act from a government official, to hear people say "but isn't that illegal?" The surprise implied by that question only makes sense if you assume either that a legal document has actual power to prevent an act (which we know it does not), or that the people who decide legal outcomes are somehow bound by the meaning of a legal document rather than the other way around.
That's only surprising if you consider the language of laws to be of paramount importance. But generally, that's not the case. Most legal outcomes just come down to the discretion of police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, in descending order of prominence.
A lot of people, and probably especially programmers and engineers, think of the legal system as a formal system. It's quite common, when discussing some court case, or perhaps some unscrupulous act from a government official, to hear people say "but isn't that illegal?" The surprise implied by that question only makes sense if you assume either that a legal document has actual power to prevent an act (which we know it does not), or that the people who decide legal outcomes are somehow bound by the meaning of a legal document rather than the other way around.