I followed the TPB trial,and I have read some things about Irwin Schiff, and what I've seen is exactly what you are saying. Even though some people find loopholes that should allow them to do X, the courts simply dismiss the loopholes as if they weren't there. Ultimately, those who are closest to the enforcement of the laws, make the laws, it's not the the politicians, it's the police. Do not misunderstand me, politicians do make the laws, but what I am trying to say is that it's not the politicians who will interpre them or enforce them, the ultimate responsability to enforce a law falls on the police, if they fail to enforce a certain law, it might aswell not exist. Law is force.
Richard Elmore wrote in 1980: "The emergence of implementation as a subject for policy analysis coincides closely with the discovery by policy analysts that decisions are not self-executing. Analysis of the policy choices matters very little if the mechanisms for implementing those choices is poorly understood. In answering the question, 'What percentage of the work of achieving a desired governmental action is done when the preferred analytic alternative has been identified?' Allison estimated that, in the normal case, it was about 10 percent, leaving the remaining 90 percent in the realm of implementation."
If sanity always prevailed, you would be completely correct. In the real world, however, I've seen the courts take positions that are prima facie insane to anybody who's not a lawyer (and even to some lawyers).
