Attempting to enforce the spirit of the law is a problem in its own right though. The flexibility of written law is repeatedly abused. Whether it's politicians taking land from their constituents, or drug laws being used to drive racism, we really shouldn't be looking at the flexibility of written law as a good thing. Or at the very least, we should be acknowledging that it's a double edged sword.

Ethereum's smart contract language is not one which makes it easy to write secure smart contracts. There are dragons everywhere, and the DAO is far and away not the only smart contract to incur their wrath.

In general I am in favor of moving to programatic, unforgiving law. But we need to do so at a pace that matches our technological progress. Today, the technology is not there to make advanced contracts. Simple ideas like 'this coin is owned by this person until a signature from this key transfers ownership to someone else' are pretty easily enforceable. Bitcoin has a scripting system with a variety of safe scripts in widespread use.

But as soon as you start aiming at things like 'this investment fund is owned by this group of people and is able to make investments under conditions X, Y, Z, and can split... etc.', you've outpaced what we currently know how to do safely.