The leading reason why courts sometimes show some flexibility on what "shall" means is that legislators are often careless in their choice of words. As a general rule it should be seen as a mandate, and some courts take the position that fixing the broken language of a statute is the legislature's problem such that a misused "shall" could result in a ruling that the statute cannot be applied as drafted (e.g., if an inadvertent mandate infringes the rights of a party), but that revision of the statute should be by the legislature and not by the court's deliberately misreading the language in order to prevent an unjust or irrational outcome.