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Normal people routinely reason backwards from their preferred conclusion, and judges are no different. Unfortunately their word is often final, so tough shit. This has been and remains the status quo, and wordy legal analysis can often just be a figleaf facade to obfuscate the real reasons a judge wants to rule a certain way. For example much of 19th century UK law used the generic 'he' pronoun but Parliament passed the Interpretation Act in 1850 that said "Words importing the Masculine Gender shall be deemed and taken to include Females." [So does that mean when the law said that "Every Man shall ... be entitled to be registered as a Voter" meant women could vote? LOL of course not. Ok, so that does that mean a female tavern owner could not be convicted of harboring a prostitute because the law only said 'he'? LOL of course not. They can do what they want because fuck you that's why.
Sometimes judges get caught in an inescapable vice they just can't get out, like the time the 9th Circuit was forced to rule that second-degree murder was not a crime of violence.
[OK, it's slightly more complicated than that. The technical explanation is that under the federal sentencing guidelines, you would get extra time imposed if one of your prior convictions was a "crime of violence", which was defined as a crime that either was "murder" (generically defined) or at least had an element of use of force. The problem is that under some state law, you could be convicted of "felony murder", which does not require use of force, and also does not meet the "generic" definition of "murder".]
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