Glen Newey, in the LRB:

Systematic ambiguity is the point – or the unavoidable by-blow of the fact that such agreements result from horse-trading between interest groups. The problems start when lawyers or academics try to take designedly plastic texts literally. They become particularly sharp when ‘law’ is invested with talismanic qualities which, it is thought, can immunize us from our own depravity.

From the archive:

Having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, he asked, what did the turtle rest on?

Another turtle.

And that turtle?

"Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."

Gloves Off