 The magistrates’ approach put a special emphasis on the principle of certainty in criminal liability, and the appeal court’s approach put a special emphasis on the effective accomplishment of the purpose the legislation was designed to pursue. Each approach would take the law in a different direction. The application of the term was indeterminate (before the decision of the appeal court set a precedent) if neither approach was demanded by the complex resources of legal reasoning that the courts (as a matter of legal obligation) had to act upon. If that was the case, then the appeal court’s decision was not contrary to the law. But a decision upholding the acquittal would not have been contrary to the law, either. The law as it was at the time of the decision allowed the courts to move it in either direction.