I fail to see how that's a bad thing, or how people determined to do the wrong thing no matter the cost or justification make the existence of those rules and guides bad either.

It's when the terms 'guidelines' & 'rules' become interchangable or indistinguishable, that the problems start.

Perhaps this will help:

THE NATURE OF LAW 41

In the traditional formulation, courts are required to discover law rather than invent it. In recent years this formulation has come under attack, as presupposing a Platonist ontology, and it is well to put the matter less metaphysically. Clearly we could commission the courts not to waste time giving reasons for their decisions, but to hand down their decisions more expeditiously, with occasional notes about what their policy is going to be for the future. This is the natural practice of administrative tribunals, headmasters and College deans; and it is noteworthy that as the Supreme Court of the United States of America has taken over the functions of a legislature, it has showed signs of being more concerned to make rules for the future than to determine the law actually existing at the time. But in so far as this is done, law ceases to be the common property of all citizens and becomes, instead, merely the rulings of the government; and much of the recent resentment against the Supreme Court is due to an obscure sense that it was putting itself above the Constitution, instead of being under it, like everybody else, and concerned, like everybody else, only more authoritatively, to work out what it meant. Only if the interpretation of the law is guided by reason can we all join in, and regard it as a common possession and bond of unity between us all.