If everyone was sending encrypted emails it would be unpratical, though.
A password doesn't even fall under 'free speech', so even in a free country like US one can get slapped with 'obstruction of justice' if one doesn't provide a password. I'll leave it to your imagination to what happens in other, more oppressive countries...
But I guess that large webmail providers can band together and ensure that e-mails between their systems are encrypted (i.e. all messages sent by gmail to other gmail addresses or hotmail addresses are encrypted).
Then users would just use HTTPS to check their mail and everything would be encrypted.
This is not perfect, but it is at least a stopgap.