>For millennia, systems of justice—including the one Chief Justice Roberts heads—have been based in no small part on human judgment rather than ironclad objective rules. In a criminal context this leads to leniency as often as harshness.
And that's the entire problem.
A priori certainty of legal outcomes isn't a problem to be "fixed", it's a basic requirement of any reliable legal system.
If purely mechanical solutions lead to bad outcomes, that's a good thing! It means those solutions can be acknowledged as bad and removed or reworked. If instead you arbitrarily make the pain go away because it's convenient you're stuck with a bad solution.
And that's the entire problem.
A priori certainty of legal outcomes isn't a problem to be "fixed", it's a basic requirement of any reliable legal system.
If purely mechanical solutions lead to bad outcomes, that's a good thing! It means those solutions can be acknowledged as bad and removed or reworked. If instead you arbitrarily make the pain go away because it's convenient you're stuck with a bad solution.