Rules are everywhere -- in families, in sports, in businesses, in societies, in international activities.
What problems arise when creating legislation, enforcing laws, and administering justice? Legal systems tend to evolve toward byzantine complexity, full of exceptions, loopholes, and a maze of bureaucratic procedures. Policing depends on budgets, quotas, surveillance, and effort. Innocence and sentencing are negotiated through plea bargains, judicial activism, jury tampering, and sowing "reasonable" doubt. Many verdicts and authorities seem arbitrary. Corruption, vague standards, faulty interpretations, algorithmic decisions, and specialized regulations often cause issues. At the core of many predicaments is mistrust.
Lam's argument is that legalists who are strictly "by the book" become compliant robots and ultimately usher in an undesirable tyranny.