If I understand right, your first point is that it makes sense for officials to follow the law because parliament and the courts are better placed to alter it. Another point is then that it makes sense to limit your activity for the benefit of the group (‘individual placing themselves above the group’)
These are fairly sensible reasons to obey the law. Does that mean law loses its force when parliament and courts are sufficiently incompetent or crooked? Likewise when acting for a small minority rather than the group?
Not sure officials think of law this way. Further, an open question whether a system could function with this kind of clause being widely accepted by lawyers and legal officials.
Great post! I wonder if the ‘weirdness’ be partially due to intuitions about human freedom of choice. For instance, it seems nonsensical to ask whether unicellular organisms could alter their behaviour to modify models predicting said behaviour, and thus ‘control’ their fate. Are humans in the same boat?