Looking at edge cases is pretty productive for mathematicians—you don’t go around seeing things like the Cantor set or functions that are continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere in everyday life, but weird things like those tend to be important for advancing understanding.
On the other hand, hard cases make bad law—accommodations for weird and egregious situations (like the teenager who can’t legally consent to sex but can be held legally responsible for child support) tend to become loopholes that get exploited to make worse outcomes in more common situations.
Looking at edge cases is pretty productive for mathematicians—you don’t go around seeing things like the Cantor set or functions that are continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere in everyday life, but weird things like those tend to be important for advancing understanding.
On the other hand, hard cases make bad law—accommodations for weird and egregious situations (like the teenager who can’t legally consent to sex but can be held legally responsible for child support) tend to become loopholes that get exploited to make worse outcomes in more common situations.