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Only because in the main, the legal force of the law is enforced in ways that accord with the public morality. This is what gives it "legitimacy". You know as well as I that if all the laws on all the books were enforced equally and to the full extent, the government would fall tomorrow. It is only by not enforcing the vast majority of the law (which criminalizes the entire population) that the powerful can selectively choose the exceptions to that rule. The unlucky few to get charged with some obscure statute that gets used once a decade or so. It's a handy tool to have, deciding who is a criminal and who isn't based on your own personal (and influenced/lobbied/payed etc.) opinion.
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