I think the big difference that's often missed is that culturally, we (UK) tend to trust the judicial system to make reasonable interpretations of laws - more s

I think the big difference that's often missed is that culturally, we (UK) tend to trust the judicial system to make reasonable interpretations of laws - more so than we trust the politicians to write them. I'm sure egregious examples can be found, but on the whole that's how our system functions. This is almost a polar opposite of the American legal culture, which seems to prefer to be bound by exacting wording (and resulting loopholes). I'm not trying to argue that either position is preferred, just that reading foreign laws through the eyes of your own legal system can often produce skewed results. (My favourite example of this is where English law seems to provide much lesser sentences than US law - I think "death by dangerous driving" was the specific example I found. What actually happens is the in the US, you plea bargain to a lesser charge, and end up receiving a pretty comparable sentence to the English charge. The results end up very similar, but if you view the English law through US eyes it appears amazingly lenient.)