Except it literally is - both the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law are equally important under the American (and English!) legal systems and most interesting precedent is due to ‘edge cases’.
It’s impossible to write any law which covers every scenario and is not either overbroad (penalizes actually desirable or ‘ok’ behavior in some cases) while not being possible to get around for bad behavior.
Also, as the old saw goes - ‘if the letter of the law is not in your favor, argue the intent.
If the intent of the law is not in your favor, argue the facts.
If neither the letter nor the intent of the law is in your favor, pound the table.’
So are you saying this law is a formalisation of what (should?) Already be happening?
I'm not American so I don't really know the context but it seems to me general lyrics about illegality are just general lyrics whereas specific lyrics, with other evidence could form the basis of a case.
Well, state law could fall back on martian (with an "n") law. It doesn't matter. Laws exist to state the thing you cannot do. If there is no law against the thing, the thing's not illegal. Falling back on another system doesn't make it any less true that unless there's a law against a thing, you are free to do that thing. And I'd add that laws stating a thing must be done a certain way are simply excluding all other ways of doing a thing. And even if English Common Law fell back on some unspoken Viking Code, the entire body of law exists to state what is forbidden.
That's basically how all Anglo-Saxon (including the US) law, i.e. case law, looks like.
reply