Thread:Comments:High Court of Australia dismisses appeal against conviction, compulsory voting/Consideration of "human rights" requires conviction/reply (9)

That definition is another example of the sort of approximation I'm talking about, that usually looks okay, but then around the fringes one needs to attend the difference between approximation and reality.

The law is an emergent phenomenon arising from the interactions of people in society. In a certain sense, the "court of last resort" is public opinion, since in a sense the people give the government permission to exist. But that too is an approximation, and one that on examination breaks down very quickly into 'applied politics'.