If they don't like this ruling, the legislators are free to draft legislature to clarify and correct it.
As you describe, they can do their jobs. If they don't, we have to assume that they are fine with this interpretation.
It's a common misconception among American technologists that law is some kind of code that you can deterministically, and unambiguously execute on a VM, and come up with the same result every single time.
If that's the sort of thing you're looking for, you could try moving to a Civil Law country. You have a lot of options in this case - most of the world runs on Civil Law. In the boundless wisdom of the founding father, America forked its legal system from the United Kingdom, and is therefore a Common Law nation, where courts can routinely interpret legislature as they see fit, and set binding precedent when they do so.
"If they don't, we have to assume that they are fine with this interpretation."
That method of operation leaves it open to future disputes. It's better to have a well defined law that doesn't rely on interpretation as those interpretations change over time.
Not to mention, this interpretation should never have occurred to begin with. It's a concept in law that you cannot ignore or contradict the wording of a law to pursue its spirit. This clearly defines "fish" in such a way that it is inconsistent with the text. That one also must use the definitions defined in the law, defined in similar laws, or defined in the dictionary. Which this meets none of those.
"It's a common misconception among American technologists that law is some kind of code that you can deterministically, and unambiguously execute on a VM, and come up with the same result every single time."
That is the goal - that the law is defined in a way to produce consistent results and is applied equally. That's why we have rules of procedure, follow precedent, etc.
> That method of operation leaves it open to future disputes.
That method of operation is precisely how the legislature and the judiciary in this country works. Based on a decision made ~250 years ago.
When a law is open-ended, the judiciary clarifies it. If the legislature doesn't like this clarification, it passes a new law. If the legislature includes a contradiction to the clarification in the new law, the courts take this into account as a strong indicator of how the law should be interpreted in the future.
> It's better to have a well defined law that doesn't rely on interpretation as those interpretations change over time.
If you believe this strongly enough, you should consider moving to a Civil Law nation, where the process I described does not happen. This is a Common Law nation, that is built on this process.
> That is the goal - that the law is defined in a way to produce consistent results and is applied equally.
This goal, like a spherical cow, is impossible to meet. In practice, ambiguities and uncertainties always exist, and every country's political system has a process for resolving it. This country's process is a push-and-pull between the judiciary and the legislature.
(1) It is not in fact a concept in law that the wording of a law must always trump the intent of its authors; in fact, that's a hotly debated topic (this is the distinction between "textualism" and "originalism").
(2) We don't even reach that problem here, because there is no ambiguity about what this statute says. To find that bees aren't fish, the court would have had to literally ignore the whole statutory definition.
(3) There's no "interpretation" (in the natural sense of the word) involved here. The statute defines the term we're debating, explicitly, exactly because they don't want courts to make up their own definition for the term "fish".
"(1) It is not in fact a concept in law that the wording of a law must always trump the intent of its authors"
I have precedent in my state that says otherwise - that you cannot ignore the text to pursue the spirit.
"We don't even reach that problem here, because there is no ambiguity about what this statute says"
Please explain what invertebrates was added under fish with other aquatic-relates species while the other addition of plants was given its own category.
Further, the same logic used by the parent also makes the statute incoherent, because it explicitly protects other things that can't possibly be retconned into a reasonable definition of fish; amphibians simply aren't fish. Their argument proves too much.
I suppose you could ask the legislators involved, but the courts decision is to apply the law, not probe the aesthetic choices of the legislature that aren't relevant to understanding the meaning of the law.
As you describe, they can do their jobs. If they don't, we have to assume that they are fine with this interpretation.
It's a common misconception among American technologists that law is some kind of code that you can deterministically, and unambiguously execute on a VM, and come up with the same result every single time.
If that's the sort of thing you're looking for, you could try moving to a Civil Law country. You have a lot of options in this case - most of the world runs on Civil Law. In the boundless wisdom of the founding father, America forked its legal system from the United Kingdom, and is therefore a Common Law nation, where courts can routinely interpret legislature as they see fit, and set binding precedent when they do so.