2 ms·

I think the usage of Latin is very effective in this case; The meaning of the Latin words themselves is not important, the jargon is defined in legal texts and

by Sacho 9y ago

I think the usage of Latin is very effective in this case; The meaning of the Latin words themselves is not important, the jargon is defined in legal texts and in the law. Meanwhile, the usage of Latin allows you to quickly identify which parts are legal doctrine - e.g. an "ex-parte decision" sounds like legal doctrine, "the judge made a decision without telling the other party" sounds like the judge had a grudge. I think in that sense, using a dead language is very appropriate; our jargon is a mixture of "kinda-like-but-not-quite" terms - memory, inheritance, relational, bus(actually a contraction of a Latin word), master/slave; and arcane words that might as well be Latin(multiplexer! polymorphism! bandwidth!). At least you can't really mistake the second group for anything but jargon. While people might not have to interact with engineering jargon, they are often forced to interact with legal jargon at some of the worst times in their life; I think it's good signaling if they can easily identify whether someone's entering into a "legal interaction" with them rather than just a regular talk.

kbutler 9y ago
I think that's a really good point. Latin "terms of art" are automatically recognizable as such (and often even printed in italics to further set them apart). I see them as a notification that there is something specific meant by that term. In contrast, English terms of art may be misleading based on their common interpretation - how often do people misunderstand "fair use" of copyrighted material?
cabaalis 9y ago
Yes, but we're talking about Justice, not explanation. There could come a time where "the judge made a decision without telling the other party" is no longer a valid course of action in the justice system (i.e. not true justice.) Hiding that fact behind terminology no one understands is a problem.

by Sacho 9y ago

kbutler 9y ago

I think that's a really good point. Latin "terms of art" are automatically recognizable as such (and often even printed in italics to further set them apart). I see them as a notification that there is something specific meant by that term. In contrast, English terms of art may be misleading based on their common interpretation - how often do people misunderstand "fair use" of copyrighted material?

cabaalis 9y ago

Yes, but we're talking about Justice, not explanation. There could come a time where "the judge made a decision without telling the other party" is no longer a valid course of action in the justice system (i.e. not true justice.) Hiding that fact behind terminology no one understands is a problem.