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Legalese is like that thanks to a long history of people looking for and abusing any and all loopholes. That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holdi

Legalese is like that thanks to a long history of people looking for and abusing any and all loopholes. That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holding standardized definitions that might differ from common understanding, and extreme specification of all details in an effort to preemptively close off any and all loopholes. Anyone who tries to make legalese simpler finds themselves immediately torn asunder by the aforementioned people looking for and abusing any and all loopholes as lawyers and those who learned the hard way look on shaking their heads.

max51 4y ago
I have no problem with the vocabulary itself and most of the Legalese. I try to use more of it in my documentation because, as you mentioned, it has less room to interpretation and loopholes compared to more commonly used phrasing. My problem is when they take what should have been a simple table with a few columns and turn it into a 9-line long sentence with triple negations, exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions and abusing references to other sections to create these puzzles that are very hard to solve. If they need it for some reason, they should also provide the easy-to-read version alongside it. I would prefer that the easy version came from the same people who wrote the original bill instead of a college textbook or a journalist relying on second hand information because he also can't read it properly. Mixing multiple unrelated subject into a single bill is also completely unnecessary from the pov preventing loopholes. When it gets to the point that even the people voting on it can't understand/read it, something needs to change. How do you know they didn't slip in intentional loophole? Even with a well intentioned politicians, the intern typing it could sneak something in.
the8472 4y ago
> That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holding standardized definitions that might differ from common understanding, and extreme specification of all details in an effort to preemptively close off any and all loopholes. And yet they end up with unintended consequences all the time (some of which were predicted by outside observers), outdated laws are kept on the books, tax advisors keep finding loopholes, laws are regularly taken down by constitutional courts over concerns that opponents pointed out in advance etc. etc. If that obtuse legalese is helping at all it's barely so. I don't know what would help. Maybe laws should start with outcome specifications and a bunch of policies that are applicable conditional on achieving the stated outcomes? More adversarial testing in advance, involving some game theory?
feanaro 4y ago
Yet at the same time you always hear people repeat that law isn't code, and it isn't dumb, and the spirit of the law is more important than any loophole. That if you try exploiting a loophole, you will just get caught and shot down. So which is it? And if the wording of the law is meant to prevent loopholes, then this could be accomplished in better ways than writing extremely convoluted sentences over and over again. There are patterns to the loopholes and to the disclaimers meant to prevent them, which means we could reasonably define better abstractions to avoid the need to verbosely repeat each pattern each time by replacing them with shorter, well-defined qualifiers.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  PHP got the nullsafe operator in version 8.0, released in 2020. That's two and a half decades of language improvement before this common idiom: $foo = getFoo(); if ( !$foo ) { return null; } $foo = $foo->getBar(); if ( !$foo ) { return null; } return $foo->getBaz(); ...could be replaced with this: return getFoo()?->getBar()?->getBaz(); And that was with a strong committee actually interested in improving the language. > we could reasonably define better abstractions to avoid the need > to verbosely repeat each pattern each time by replacing them with > shorter, well-defined qualifiers. The side-effects of those qualifiers are untested and unknown, and the current long legalese serves the people that it is meant to serve. Some might even call the ambiguity and ability to argue semantics a feature.
  - feanaro 4y ago
    > The side-effects of those qualifiers are untested and unknown, If you define the qualifiers to be a literal shorthand for the current status quo litany, what side-effects do you envision, other than better readability? > and the current long legalese serves the people that it is meant to serve. Does it, though? With the long-winded expensive processes favouring those with capital and punishing those with none into unjust settlements for fear of debilitating costs? With practically requiring expensive lawyers in order to have any hope of navigating the byzantine mazes of modern law?

max51 4y ago

I have no problem with the vocabulary itself and most of the Legalese. I try to use more of it in my documentation because, as you mentioned, it has less room to interpretation and loopholes compared to more commonly used phrasing. My problem is when they take what should have been a simple table with a few columns and turn it into a 9-line long sentence with triple negations, exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions and abusing references to other sections to create these puzzles that are very hard to solve. If they need it for some reason, they should also provide the easy-to-read version alongside it. I would prefer that the easy version came from the same people who wrote the original bill instead of a college textbook or a journalist relying on second hand information because he also can't read it properly. Mixing multiple unrelated subject into a single bill is also completely unnecessary from the pov preventing loopholes. When it gets to the point that even the people voting on it can't understand/read it, something needs to change. How do you know they didn't slip in intentional loophole? Even with a well intentioned politicians, the intern typing it could sneak something in.

the8472 4y ago

> That led to the natural conclusion of legal words holding standardized definitions that might differ from common understanding, and extreme specification of all details in an effort to preemptively close off any and all loopholes. And yet they end up with unintended consequences all the time (some of which were predicted by outside observers), outdated laws are kept on the books, tax advisors keep finding loopholes, laws are regularly taken down by constitutional courts over concerns that opponents pointed out in advance etc. etc. If that obtuse legalese is helping at all it's barely so. I don't know what would help. Maybe laws should start with outcome specifications and a bunch of policies that are applicable conditional on achieving the stated outcomes? More adversarial testing in advance, involving some game theory?

feanaro 4y ago

Yet at the same time you always hear people repeat that law isn't code, and it isn't dumb, and the spirit of the law is more important than any loophole. That if you try exploiting a loophole, you will just get caught and shot down. So which is it? And if the wording of the law is meant to prevent loopholes, then this could be accomplished in better ways than writing extremely convoluted sentences over and over again. There are patterns to the loopholes and to the disclaimers meant to prevent them, which means we could reasonably define better abstractions to avoid the need to verbosely repeat each pattern each time by replacing them with shorter, well-defined qualifiers.

dotancohen 4y ago
PHP got the nullsafe operator in version 8.0, released in 2020. That's two and a half decades of language improvement before this common idiom: $foo = getFoo(); if ( !$foo ) { return null; } $foo = $foo->getBar(); if ( !$foo ) { return null; } return $foo->getBaz(); ...could be replaced with this: return getFoo()?->getBar()?->getBaz(); And that was with a strong committee actually interested in improving the language. > we could reasonably define better abstractions to avoid the need > to verbosely repeat each pattern each time by replacing them with > shorter, well-defined qualifiers. The side-effects of those qualifiers are untested and unknown, and the current long legalese serves the people that it is meant to serve. Some might even call the ambiguity and ability to argue semantics a feature.
- feanaro 4y ago
  > The side-effects of those qualifiers are untested and unknown, If you define the qualifiers to be a literal shorthand for the current status quo litany, what side-effects do you envision, other than better readability? > and the current long legalese serves the people that it is meant to serve. Does it, though? With the long-winded expensive processes favouring those with capital and punishing those with none into unjust settlements for fear of debilitating costs? With practically requiring expensive lawyers in order to have any hope of navigating the byzantine mazes of modern law?