Yes, we wait for the courts or the legislature rather than resorting to mob justice. There are good reasons for it. The most obvious is to ensure that the corrupt politicians do not use the power of the state to arbitrarily oppress and persecute people. Another is to ensure that there is no doubt about guilt when we convict someone, and to avoid arguments about the penalties being arbitrary and unfair.
Really though, establishing courts to deal with accusations of people breaking the law is something most societies converge on at some point. "Joe was only ordered to spend 5 years working the fields, so why should Jim be executed for doing the same thing????" amounts to a rudimentary form of judicial law -- pointing to a precedent from a previous case to argue the current case.
Yes. This is what we do in the United States and most of Western Europe. This is how countries like this function
I doubt that you would be happy with the outcome, certainly not if you had to actual deal with such a legal system. Plain language laws sound great in theory, but in practice the result is a rigid system that is easily manipulated by bad actors and which becomes oppressive to honest people.
"No, I am not marketing a tobacco product, I am marketing a product that produces nicotine from other chemicals, then vaporizes it to be inhaled!"
"If I had not done it, my children would have been seriously injured, are you really going to imprison me for protecting them?"
In general, whenever a society tries to apply its legal code, it will begin to develop judicial law by necessity -- at some point you will have to deal with borderline cases where it is not clear if the law was broken, no matter how clear the language of the law might appear. Here is an ancient example taken from the bible: the death penalty shall only be imposed on the basis of testimony from two witnesses. OK, seems pretty clear, but we know from the Talmud that questions arose when the law was applied -- who counts as a witness, what counts as testimony from a witness, etc.
Also keep in mind that no matter how plainly laws are written down, over time you will wind up with a large number of laws as society deals with changing conditions and unforeseen circumstances. Inevitably you wind up with contradictory laws and you do need some process for resolving the contradiction and determining which law should be applied.
The rigidity concept you talk about effectively exists in our current system, too, it's just a matter of perspective. If the law is written in such a poor way so as to need review, and the legislators and executives in on the bill know where the jurists who will review it stand, theyve effectively got the different, rigid law they wanted until someone decides to review again. Review, with no particular cadence, or urgency, etc. I actually do think review is good, but it shouldn't stand in for actual legislation (which since about the 80s it has, largely due to Reagan era deregulation)
Maybe the breakage is somewhere else -- I talked about Citizens United elsewhere, which effectively lets corporations buy votes from legislators, and we know at least 2 of the current justices are flat-out corrupt, getting gifts and financial help from millionaire and billionaire friends.
Until a judge says it's a crime, it isn't. Innocent until proven guilty etc