Are you talking about directives in the E.U.? Or the law of a specific E.U. country? It doesn't seem to be like this in the US. If you look at laws in the US,

Are you talking about directives in the E.U.? Or the law of a specific E.U. country? It doesn't seem to be like this in the US. If you look at laws in the US, they try to define every word and every situation with a lot of cases. Vagueness seems to be avoided, and I'd say it actually doesn't seem too unfamiliar to programmers if used to the jargon