Recall that the legal system is itself provided by "the government". It's a complex system. Whether one part of it is capable of exerting influence over some particular thing comes down to competing interests. For example in the US if the states and the federal legislature are in sufficient agreement about something the constitution ceases to matter - they could literally target a single person with an arbitrary law if they so chose. Our assurance that this won't happen comes down to the fact that getting any of them to agree on anything is an exercise in herding cats.