They say that we are a nation of laws, but those laws, though clearly written down and typically written in a manner that purports to be clear and precise, do not always fit securely into the circumstances of an alleged violation of the law. Further, even those laws that seem to be cut and dry, are far too often able to be manipulated, stretched, pulled and distorted, by adroit attorneys that are exceedingly clever and highly intelligent, recognizing that in order for them to make a good living, they must therefore see themselves as being obligated to thinking outside the limiting box of the “letter of the law”, by circumventing successfully both that letter as well as the “spirt of the law.”
As much as people, want to believe that laws are equally enforced and applied fairly to all alike, the reality is that the law is quite unequally enforced, of which the typically dividing line between those that must so suffer unduly under the letter of the law and those that do not, is having money, connections, and highly competent legal counsel. On the other hand, if the spirit of the law, was truly treated as paramount in a court of law, then all those working the angles of the letter of the law, would find to their dismay that their tricks of the trade, would not so easily bear the tasty fruit that they had previously been accustomed to.
It would be sensible for humankind to remember that the fundamental purpose of laws, is never to attempt to cover every single contingency that could ever be so encountered for every interaction that could ever possibly occur; but rather to provide a fair roadmap of what behaviors are considered to be orthodox, encouraged, and thereby authorized by civil society, and which misbehaviors are considered to be unorthodox, discouraged, and thereby subject to appropriate punishment by that civil society.
As it is, there are way too many laws on the books, and it seems that each year, even more laws are legislated and thereby passed into existence; of which, correspondingly, the previous laws that have been written into existence, seldom seem to ever become defunct; so what happens, in effect, is humankind’s book of laws gets ever thicker, and thereby correspondingly they are in aggregate subject to even more avenues for clever attorneys to find ways to circumvent those good laws, written for the good of societies, but unfairly overcome by the very few, at the expense of the many.
In reality, intuitively, most people are pretty sure about what is right and what is wrong, and understand well what fairness exemplifies. The true purpose of any good law so written, is for that law to be applied universally, to all; of which, the objective of that law is to see to it that society in whole, benefits, from its equal application and the people’s adherence to it. For a certainty, not all written law is just, right, or appropriate; signifying that the highest obedience to law, is always going to be to the spirit of the law, which itself, must be in harmony with that which is known as natural law.