1) "Smart contracts"

a) The terms and conditions of the particular smart contract supersedes hundreds of years of US legal contract law, not! Directly or indirectly, this has been fudded all over the internet. 100% of the legal consensus is that  in the US, US contract law is the guiding agent. Who has jurisdiction is another matter, but in whatever jurisdiction, that jurisdiction's legal system is the controlling entity. You are not waving away the US court system with words written in magic pixie dust on a piece of paper.

b) It''s clear that the Ethereum foundation immediately needs to consult with legal experts in the areas of contract law and security and exchange law in order to clarify in their talks what exactly they can and cannot claim/promise. CEO's never say anything for public attribution without clearing it with legal.

c) Humans have already overridden divine authority, so a software contract "authority" shouldn't be an issue. Using the "Bible" as an example, use cases that have been modified by humans are: the okness of slaves, stoning, polygamy, gayness, the position of women etc etc

2) Analog world example of forking:

a) Occasionally, governments would print out new high value bank notes and invalidate by a certain date the high value bank notes that they were replacing. The older bank notes were to be brought to a bank for exchange. I believe the US did this with $100 bill and the EU is considering this for the 500 euro banknote.

3) The law of unintended consequences. It wouldn't be a surprise if the IRS gets involved and forces the Ethereum Foundation to freeze the hacked coins until the hacker pays capital gains. It's possible that many tax starved countries could also lay claim to this bounty. Through this mechanism alone, the hacker might never see their monies.

The eth use case:

The eth use case is still the same as any cryptocurrency, lower financial friction as compared to credit cards and wire transfers along with enhanced blockchain fuctionality. IMHO, as long as device storage, device speed and internet connections get faster, this will favor crypto 2.0 currencies. BTC has a use case as a coin for the storage of value, but BTC has a weakness in that mining is not geographically disbursed. It's still early days yet and BTC could end up being the Visicalc/Lotus 1-2-3 of crypto coins.