Something that stuck with me from law school was that frequently when students raised the point that a law could be written far more simply, the professor would

Something that stuck with me from law school was that frequently when students raised the point that a law could be written far more simply, the professor would walk through the language they suggested and basically always the simplest formulation was absolutely shot through with loopholes, and as you close the obvious loopholes one by one, you end up with language that looks just like the statute as written, or you end up with a law that doesn’t accomplish the same thing.