Far be it for me to come to the defence of lawyers, but there are some mitigating circumstances that should be familiar to software developers:

* Lots of laws look crufty to casual observers, but the reason is that they have been amended again and again and again over the years to accommodate various edge cases.

* Laws are a structured, formal attempt to model human bevaviour, which is messy, fuzzy and unpredictable except at the statistical level. A clear, simple law may not be the best way to govern unclear, complex agents in a complex system.

The temptation to throw out our laws and replace them with something simple and clear is dangerously close to the Second System Syndrome to which well-meaning software developers often fall prey.