Quote (Thor123422 @ Oct 13 2020 11:08pm)
There's more to law than the letter. There are fundamental principles in our society and western law/society as a whole that aren't necessarily written, but are nonetheless fundamental to the process. One of those things is that a contract doesn't need to have a "I can't order you to take an action that would result in your death" clause to say they can't do that.
Judges are not, should not be, and have never been slaves to the absolute letter of the written law for this very reason. Law has many underlying fundamental principles that are in mind when laws are written and you end up in ridiculous circumstances if you refuse to acknowledge them.
These are things which are routinely covered in legislation, in effect making unlawful contracts null and void. This often happens with rental contracts, where in certain jurisdictions anything in the contract afoul or not specified in the legislation is legally unenforceable. There is no need to accept ridiculous circumstances.
Laws specifically cannot be too vague as to prevent enforcement (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine), but we trust judges to make decisions based on "fundamental principles" that are so vague as to be literally unwritten?