Well, we don’t follow the law to the letter basically anywhere. The law gets interpreted and judged by courts (at least in the English common law tradition, though it happens to some extent everywhere), precisely because people generally dislike someone doing something against the spirit of the law, and using technical terms to try to pretend it’s ok.

Doesn’t stop people from arguing that no one could tell what the intent was, or the intent was actually what they did, or the law was so badly written that they are right because. And sometimes they win. But it’s rare.

Not really. The US is a common law system. The letter of the law is secondary to judicial opinions by definition.