The particular definition isn't as important as long as it doesn't leave room for ambiguity. It could be "a table is anything made of wood" and it wouldn't matter.

>Law is not computer code. There is a reason we have judges and a court system to interpret laws.

I'm of the opinion that the judicial system should be as dumb as possible. It's the legislative system where the real work should happen.

PS: Downvoting does not constitute a counterargument.

The definition of a table does matter a lot, even in law. For example, businesses may deduct purchases of tables from their taxes. It wouldn't be right if a company couldn't deduct a plastic table from their taxes because it wasn't a legal table or if a company could deduct a music box because it was legally a table.

When you start talking about seizing assets then the definition is all that more important.

> PS: Downvoting does not constitute a counterargument

You didn't really give an argument to counter.

In fairness, i didn't really either.

"The particular definition isn't as important as long as it doesn't leave room for ambiguity" is a pretty controversial statement. To me, this seems obviously false. However, i think its kind of like arguing about what makes a good person. Yes you can appeal to certain general principles, but at some level the general principles come down to "because i think so".

As a fundemental principle, i think which behaviours the law forbids and which it does not is important. The purpose of law is to regulate certain behaviors; it is not an exercise in mathematics or formal logic. This seems self-obvious to me, but as a normative claim there is not much i can say to convince you if you disagree.

To that end, i think criminalizing the wrong conduct is worse than mild ambiguity in laws, when the ambiguity can largely be resolved through common sense. I believe the principle of precedent in common law systems combined with the principle that ambiguities should generally be interpreted to benefit the defendent, effectively mitigates the downsides of allowing mild ambiguity.