6 ms·

Covering the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in (Mostly) Plain English

f1shy 2y ago
There are some projects around the world to force lawyers to write in "normal" language. (Which BTW, is how it should be, as we should be able to fully understand the laws that can cost money or send us to jail). Off topic: does somebody have some update on any such a project? Would be great news to see some important country taking action into it.
- macintux 2y ago
  I'll freely admit to complete ignorance, but this seems like a bad idea. Much like we use well-defined but somewhat arcane terminology to talk about computers, because precision is important, I'm skeptical about the implications of "plain" language in laws. Precision and comprehensibility to an uneducated person seem like they would always be at odds.
  - cowpig 2y ago
    To add to this, language models are now quite good at explaining legalese, so that limits the positive impact of pushing for plainer language.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    The laws are basically jargon. There is a good reason behind the wording, it rests on centuries of case law of people hammering out exactly what each work or phrase means exactly, but it does add a layer of obfuscation for the layman. The law is a huge machine, and the laws are the code. Could it be better? Definitely. Lots of decisions were made that were a good idea at the time but are now pain points, but the system is too big to make systematic changes. You have to work within the framework.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      > the system is too big to make systematic changes This seems like a flawed argument to me that if applied would see technology stagnating. The reason it’s flawed is the assumption that the system is at a fixed max size. However, if it’s growing quickly, you can always come up with new systemic ways of doing things that are divorced from the past and over time most of the things are done the new way. You can even refactor/replace the old stuff over time. Law isn’t quite like code which is where this analogy breaks down a bit but something to think about.
      - nradov 2y ago
        In a common law system, like what we use in the USA and most of the Anglosphere, it is impossible to divorce from the past.
  - f1shy 2y ago
    I'm not going to fine or send somebody to jail with my computer jargon... that is a huge difference. I'm not agains jargon, in other disciplines, even internally between lawyers in procedures for example. But the law that applies to ME, I have to be able to parse it.
- NoboruWataya 2y ago
  I would rather laws continue to be written with precision and for the government to have an information portal describing the relevant legal obligations in plain language. Forcing laws themselves to be written in plain language is a recipe for disaster. Imagine the tax code was subject to that constraint, for example. Corporations would have a field day finding loopholes. Software can also have a huge impact on our lives and I don't think anyone would insist that software must be written so as to be easily understood by people who are not software developers.
  - josefritzishere 2y ago
    As someone who works with legal language regularly, the notion that it's designed for clarity is hilarious. It's often constructed deliberately to obsfucate its purpose. Plain clear language with defined terms is legally binding and difficult to circumvent.
    - graypegg 2y ago
      I can understand that, but I don't know if legal texts would be more explicit given simpler language. You can bake ambiguity into any text you want. "Simple english" will naturally just have less words than legalese, since that's the thing people find so daunting about it. Doesn't that mean that either A) words will have multiple overlapping meanings or B) entire phrases will have to be used to explain what is normally 1 word? Either case leaves a lot of room for "offensive lawyering". Defined legal terms is just what we have now, but starting over.
    - NoboruWataya 2y ago
      I specifically said precision and not clarity, which is not the same. The thing is, though, that legal language is not "designed" for anything, in fact it is not "designed" at all. As for being constructed deliberately to obfuscate its purpose, all I can say is that that's not my experience and it seems like a pretty self-defeating aim to me. For legal language to have any value at all, you have to be reasonably certain that a court would give effect to your intended meaning, and the more you obfuscate your intentions, the bigger the risk that it will be construed in an unintended way by a court. > Plain clear language with defined terms is legally binding and difficult to circumvent. As soon as you introduce defined terms, it is instantly less plain and less clear.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- graypegg 2y ago
  I think legalize is the way it is because it requires precision. A lot of the words and phrases that show up in legal documents don't have an easy definition because they're litigated terms. "fair use" isn't just "a justified use of some media", it's a specific pointer that points at a corpus of laws and decisions over decades and decades. We generally want to be able to assume that the legal system makes similar decisions given similar situations, but the world doesn't hand it precise duplicates. Words that point at specific facts of a situation from the past are always going to be complex. It's not just for describing the situation narratively, it's also got to communicate specific categories of facts. How would we simply communicate that we (western legal tradition for example) care about the fact a murder was planned. What is planning? Is planning a murder a crime, and if not, why does it make the crime of murder worse? "Mens Rea" gives us a pointer to refer to the non-criminal act of having the intention to commit a crime. That's pretty useful, especially when you can CMD+F for that over centuries of people hashing out each case where the mental state of the accused mattered. I do think there's a case for simplified explanations of legal text, but the source document should probably remain the "real" document.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    You absolutely can get precision and plain language at the same time. See, for example, the English text of the GDPR. The ideal situation is that we only need about half an hour of instruction (saying things much like your second paragraph) before a literate amateur can interpret most laws correctly. That instruction can then be given in schools: it could be lumped in along with all the other miscellanea ("here's how to vote", basic financial literacy, sex-ed, etc).
- lelandfe 2y ago
  Ooh, this is something boring few people know about! There have been many efforts across the US government to simplify the language used in documents. Nixon, Clinton, and Obama all worked on this. Obama actually got a group organized around this, and there are now progress reports available on how the US is doing: https://www.doi.gov/plainlanguage https://www.doi.gov/plainlanguage And a dedicated website for it, with examples useful for many: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ Check out this Clinton era "No Gobbledygook Award" recipient: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/awards/award-11/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/awards/award-11/
- TRiG_Ireland 2y ago
  In a common law system, the benefit of the arcane language is that it's been tested in court before, so it has a definite meaning. In that sense, it's actually "clear", even if it's pretty obscure to the layman. By contrast, novel wording has not been tested in previous cases, so no matter how clearly it might be written, there's a degree of uncertainty. A term doesn't have a definite legal meaning until a judge has made a ruling on it. That's why contracts and wills, particularly, often use weird phrasing.
i_k_k 2y ago
It's worth mentioning that while some parts of law can be really arcane (parents, terms of service, etc.), Supreme Court decisions are generally pretty readable.
- tiahura 2y ago
  Mostly agree about Constitutional cases. Some of the less sexy statutory construction cases are written for a smaller audience, and even as a lawyer, if you don’t practice in that field, they can be pretty opaque.
  - Matticus_Rex 2y ago
    Ugh, and the range of clarity from judge to judge is another big factor.
    - returningfory2 2y ago
      Interesting! How do you rate the different SCOTUS justices in terms of clarity?
      - Matticus_Rex 2y ago
        I only read the big cases since law school, so take this with a grain of salt -- I've only read one or two KBJ decisions and a handful from Kavanaugh and ACB. In terms of legal clarity alone, Gorsuch and then Kagan are ahead of the pack by some margin, followed at some distance by Roberts and ACB. Sotomayor is great as a writer, but not in terms of legal clarity. I think Thomas is middle-of-the-pack, and I think he gets underrated in this regard because people dislike his opinions. Again, experience of Kavanaugh and KBJ's writing is limited, but they're at least not far behind the pack here. Alito stands alone as the only one I'd say is bad for a Supreme Court justice. And that's relative, so it doesn't mean he's awful, but I do actively avoid his writing. The variance gets way higher the further from SCOTUS you go. At the state level it's basically roulette.
        2y ago
tiahura 2y ago
Honestly, ChatGPT and Claude can tldr more than good enough for government work. Plus you can ask follow-up questions.
aaronbrethorst 2y ago
Check out the podcast Strict Scrutiny for good coverage of what SCOTUS is up to on a weekly basis: https://crooked.com/podcast-series/strict-scrutiny/ https://crooked.com/podcast-series/strict-scrutiny/ It’s hosted by three con law professors, but they’re all extremely adept at avoiding jargon and explaining how the cases tie back to everyday life.
- nonethewiser 2y ago
  Hard to take a law podcast seriously when it openly broadcasts a political agenda. The image with Trump with a partisan caption, all the partisan logo T's in the merch shop ("abortion is healthcare", "leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks", etc.). The one linked here and SCOTUSBlog seem much better.
  - monocularvision 2y ago
    I highly recommend Advisory Opinions (https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/ https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/) for legal podcasts. The two hosts are center-right, but I think their takes are largely pretty fair. Note: Sarah Isgur worked in the Trump Justice Department but is hardly a fan of Trump… again, I find her pretty fair minded).
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    Just sounds pro-democracy and pro-ethics, of that's an "agenda" then it's a good one. What you've described increases my desire to watch it, not decrease.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      Openly calling people "freaks" is not exactly indicative that you can expect that person to be impartial and accurate in their reporting of the facts. Moreover, calling abortion "healthcare" is disingenuous at best. Everyone knows damn well why people oppose abortion, and trying to euphemistically refer to it as healthcare is willfully ignoring the dispute.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Out of curiosity, are all courts in the US required to publish transcripts or videos? It would be interesting to have bots processing those feeds to keep tabs on what is going on.
- semiquaver 2y ago
  https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/federal-court-reporting-program https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/federal-court-report... Federal courts transcribe everything and the transcripts are generally possible to obtain although in some cases the transcripts are not free. State courts vary. Availability of videos or audio recordings varies even more by jurisdiction.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Practically all published judicial material is a public record (although only under the 1st Amend, generally not under FOIA laws). The problem is that a great number of state courts (which is the majority of courts in the USA) use shitty outdated systems and don't have Internet access to their records. Or they heavily restrict access to only attorneys. The records are public, though, so if there is some specific you want, you can get it. It just might take some effort.
semiquaver 2y ago
This site is the personal blog of a well-regarded reporter that is a primary contributor to SCOTUSBlog: https://www.scotusblog.com/ https://www.scotusblog.com/ All these posts are cross-posted there. If I recall correctly the reason for the cross-post setup has to do with conflict-of-interest avoidance since she is married to the owner of SCOTUSBlog. So you’re probably better off reading that site directly than this one.
nonethewiser 2y ago
At cursory glance, this and SCOTUSBlog seem pretty reasonable and not captured by the usual unhinged "the court is corrupt" narrative.
- TylerE 2y ago
  Is it really unhinged when more and more corrupt, undocumented, gifts keep getting revealed?
  - nonethewiser 2y ago
    It's partisan. It's no coincidence that the side disagreeing with all the EFFECTS of the decisions (not necessarily even the legal interpretations - those tend not to get addressed) is the one calling it corrupt.
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      You said it was unhinged but now you're pleading it down to merely partisan?
    - Slick6906 2y ago
      Please, go ahead and explain how this is not corruption: https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishi.... I’m a huge mental gymnastics enthusiast.
      - morkalork 2y ago
        Well you see, it's just a gratuity.
      - Ajedi32 2y ago
        > In early July 2008 Ask yourself this: why are you only hearing about this 13 years later? This wasn't a big deal when the allegedly problematic ruling on the hedge fund came down, only when the ruling on Roe v. Wade did. I won't comment on the factual accuracy of the claims in the article. I haven't investigated them thoroughly, so I don't have an informed opinion on them. But if you want a rebuttal, maybe read the response from Alito linked to in the article? https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers-alito-gifts-disclosure-alaska-singer-23b51eda https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers...
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
I was going to recommend SCOTUSBlog and then I noticed it's the same person... https://www.scotusblog.com/ https://www.scotusblog.com/ Volokh Conspiracy is also great https://reason.com/volokh/ https://reason.com/volokh/
cvoss 2y ago
See also the Advisory Opinions podcast if you like to consume your analysis of court arguments and opinions by listening.

There are some projects around the world to force lawyers to write in "normal" language. (Which BTW, is how it should be, as we should be able to fully understand the laws that can cost money or send us to jail). Off topic: does somebody have some update on any such a project? Would be great news to see some important country taking action into it.

macintux 2y ago
I'll freely admit to complete ignorance, but this seems like a bad idea. Much like we use well-defined but somewhat arcane terminology to talk about computers, because precision is important, I'm skeptical about the implications of "plain" language in laws. Precision and comprehensibility to an uneducated person seem like they would always be at odds.
- cowpig 2y ago
  To add to this, language models are now quite good at explaining legalese, so that limits the positive impact of pushing for plainer language.
- jandrese 2y ago
  The laws are basically jargon. There is a good reason behind the wording, it rests on centuries of case law of people hammering out exactly what each work or phrase means exactly, but it does add a layer of obfuscation for the layman. The law is a huge machine, and the laws are the code. Could it be better? Definitely. Lots of decisions were made that were a good idea at the time but are now pain points, but the system is too big to make systematic changes. You have to work within the framework.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    > the system is too big to make systematic changes This seems like a flawed argument to me that if applied would see technology stagnating. The reason it’s flawed is the assumption that the system is at a fixed max size. However, if it’s growing quickly, you can always come up with new systemic ways of doing things that are divorced from the past and over time most of the things are done the new way. You can even refactor/replace the old stuff over time. Law isn’t quite like code which is where this analogy breaks down a bit but something to think about.
    - nradov 2y ago
      In a common law system, like what we use in the USA and most of the Anglosphere, it is impossible to divorce from the past.
- f1shy 2y ago
  I'm not going to fine or send somebody to jail with my computer jargon... that is a huge difference. I'm not agains jargon, in other disciplines, even internally between lawyers in procedures for example. But the law that applies to ME, I have to be able to parse it.
NoboruWataya 2y ago
I would rather laws continue to be written with precision and for the government to have an information portal describing the relevant legal obligations in plain language. Forcing laws themselves to be written in plain language is a recipe for disaster. Imagine the tax code was subject to that constraint, for example. Corporations would have a field day finding loopholes. Software can also have a huge impact on our lives and I don't think anyone would insist that software must be written so as to be easily understood by people who are not software developers.
- josefritzishere 2y ago
  As someone who works with legal language regularly, the notion that it's designed for clarity is hilarious. It's often constructed deliberately to obsfucate its purpose. Plain clear language with defined terms is legally binding and difficult to circumvent.
  - graypegg 2y ago
    I can understand that, but I don't know if legal texts would be more explicit given simpler language. You can bake ambiguity into any text you want. "Simple english" will naturally just have less words than legalese, since that's the thing people find so daunting about it. Doesn't that mean that either A) words will have multiple overlapping meanings or B) entire phrases will have to be used to explain what is normally 1 word? Either case leaves a lot of room for "offensive lawyering". Defined legal terms is just what we have now, but starting over.
  - NoboruWataya 2y ago
    I specifically said precision and not clarity, which is not the same. The thing is, though, that legal language is not "designed" for anything, in fact it is not "designed" at all. As for being constructed deliberately to obfuscate its purpose, all I can say is that that's not my experience and it seems like a pretty self-defeating aim to me. For legal language to have any value at all, you have to be reasonably certain that a court would give effect to your intended meaning, and the more you obfuscate your intentions, the bigger the risk that it will be construed in an unintended way by a court. > Plain clear language with defined terms is legally binding and difficult to circumvent. As soon as you introduce defined terms, it is instantly less plain and less clear.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
graypegg 2y ago
I think legalize is the way it is because it requires precision. A lot of the words and phrases that show up in legal documents don't have an easy definition because they're litigated terms. "fair use" isn't just "a justified use of some media", it's a specific pointer that points at a corpus of laws and decisions over decades and decades. We generally want to be able to assume that the legal system makes similar decisions given similar situations, but the world doesn't hand it precise duplicates. Words that point at specific facts of a situation from the past are always going to be complex. It's not just for describing the situation narratively, it's also got to communicate specific categories of facts. How would we simply communicate that we (western legal tradition for example) care about the fact a murder was planned. What is planning? Is planning a murder a crime, and if not, why does it make the crime of murder worse? "Mens Rea" gives us a pointer to refer to the non-criminal act of having the intention to commit a crime. That's pretty useful, especially when you can CMD+F for that over centuries of people hashing out each case where the mental state of the accused mattered. I do think there's a case for simplified explanations of legal text, but the source document should probably remain the "real" document.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  You absolutely can get precision and plain language at the same time. See, for example, the English text of the GDPR. The ideal situation is that we only need about half an hour of instruction (saying things much like your second paragraph) before a literate amateur can interpret most laws correctly. That instruction can then be given in schools: it could be lumped in along with all the other miscellanea ("here's how to vote", basic financial literacy, sex-ed, etc).
lelandfe 2y ago
Ooh, this is something boring few people know about! There have been many efforts across the US government to simplify the language used in documents. Nixon, Clinton, and Obama all worked on this. Obama actually got a group organized around this, and there are now progress reports available on how the US is doing: https://www.doi.gov/plainlanguage https://www.doi.gov/plainlanguage And a dedicated website for it, with examples useful for many: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ Check out this Clinton era "No Gobbledygook Award" recipient: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/awards/award-11/ https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/awards/award-11/
TRiG_Ireland 2y ago
In a common law system, the benefit of the arcane language is that it's been tested in court before, so it has a definite meaning. In that sense, it's actually "clear", even if it's pretty obscure to the layman. By contrast, novel wording has not been tested in previous cases, so no matter how clearly it might be written, there's a degree of uncertainty. A term doesn't have a definite legal meaning until a judge has made a ruling on it. That's why contracts and wills, particularly, often use weird phrasing.

i_k_k 2y ago

It's worth mentioning that while some parts of law can be really arcane (parents, terms of service, etc.), Supreme Court decisions are generally pretty readable.

tiahura 2y ago
Mostly agree about Constitutional cases. Some of the less sexy statutory construction cases are written for a smaller audience, and even as a lawyer, if you don’t practice in that field, they can be pretty opaque.
- Matticus_Rex 2y ago
  Ugh, and the range of clarity from judge to judge is another big factor.
  - returningfory2 2y ago
    Interesting! How do you rate the different SCOTUS justices in terms of clarity?
    - Matticus_Rex 2y ago
      I only read the big cases since law school, so take this with a grain of salt -- I've only read one or two KBJ decisions and a handful from Kavanaugh and ACB. In terms of legal clarity alone, Gorsuch and then Kagan are ahead of the pack by some margin, followed at some distance by Roberts and ACB. Sotomayor is great as a writer, but not in terms of legal clarity. I think Thomas is middle-of-the-pack, and I think he gets underrated in this regard because people dislike his opinions. Again, experience of Kavanaugh and KBJ's writing is limited, but they're at least not far behind the pack here. Alito stands alone as the only one I'd say is bad for a Supreme Court justice. And that's relative, so it doesn't mean he's awful, but I do actively avoid his writing. The variance gets way higher the further from SCOTUS you go. At the state level it's basically roulette.
      - 2y ago

tiahura 2y ago

Honestly, ChatGPT and Claude can tldr more than good enough for government work. Plus you can ask follow-up questions.

aaronbrethorst 2y ago

Check out the podcast Strict Scrutiny for good coverage of what SCOTUS is up to on a weekly basis: https://crooked.com/podcast-series/strict-scrutiny/ https://crooked.com/podcast-series/strict-scrutiny/ It’s hosted by three con law professors, but they’re all extremely adept at avoiding jargon and explaining how the cases tie back to everyday life.

nonethewiser 2y ago
Hard to take a law podcast seriously when it openly broadcasts a political agenda. The image with Trump with a partisan caption, all the partisan logo T's in the merch shop ("abortion is healthcare", "leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks", etc.). The one linked here and SCOTUSBlog seem much better.
- monocularvision 2y ago
  I highly recommend Advisory Opinions (https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/ https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/) for legal podcasts. The two hosts are center-right, but I think their takes are largely pretty fair. Note: Sarah Isgur worked in the Trump Justice Department but is hardly a fan of Trump… again, I find her pretty fair minded).
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  Just sounds pro-democracy and pro-ethics, of that's an "agenda" then it's a good one. What you've described increases my desire to watch it, not decrease.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Openly calling people "freaks" is not exactly indicative that you can expect that person to be impartial and accurate in their reporting of the facts. Moreover, calling abortion "healthcare" is disingenuous at best. Everyone knows damn well why people oppose abortion, and trying to euphemistically refer to it as healthcare is willfully ignoring the dispute.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Out of curiosity, are all courts in the US required to publish transcripts or videos? It would be interesting to have bots processing those feeds to keep tabs on what is going on.

semiquaver 2y ago
https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/federal-court-reporting-program https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/federal-court-report... Federal courts transcribe everything and the transcripts are generally possible to obtain although in some cases the transcripts are not free. State courts vary. Availability of videos or audio recordings varies even more by jurisdiction.
qingcharles 2y ago
Practically all published judicial material is a public record (although only under the 1st Amend, generally not under FOIA laws). The problem is that a great number of state courts (which is the majority of courts in the USA) use shitty outdated systems and don't have Internet access to their records. Or they heavily restrict access to only attorneys. The records are public, though, so if there is some specific you want, you can get it. It just might take some effort.

semiquaver 2y ago

This site is the personal blog of a well-regarded reporter that is a primary contributor to SCOTUSBlog: https://www.scotusblog.com/ https://www.scotusblog.com/ All these posts are cross-posted there. If I recall correctly the reason for the cross-post setup has to do with conflict-of-interest avoidance since she is married to the owner of SCOTUSBlog. So you’re probably better off reading that site directly than this one.

nonethewiser 2y ago

At cursory glance, this and SCOTUSBlog seem pretty reasonable and not captured by the usual unhinged "the court is corrupt" narrative.

TylerE 2y ago
Is it really unhinged when more and more corrupt, undocumented, gifts keep getting revealed?
- nonethewiser 2y ago
  It's partisan. It's no coincidence that the side disagreeing with all the EFFECTS of the decisions (not necessarily even the legal interpretations - those tend not to get addressed) is the one calling it corrupt.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    You said it was unhinged but now you're pleading it down to merely partisan?
  - Slick6906 2y ago
    Please, go ahead and explain how this is not corruption: https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishi.... I’m a huge mental gymnastics enthusiast.
    - morkalork 2y ago
      Well you see, it's just a gratuity.
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      > In early July 2008 Ask yourself this: why are you only hearing about this 13 years later? This wasn't a big deal when the allegedly problematic ruling on the hedge fund came down, only when the ruling on Roe v. Wade did. I won't comment on the factual accuracy of the claims in the article. I haven't investigated them thoroughly, so I don't have an informed opinion on them. But if you want a rebuttal, maybe read the response from Alito linked to in the article? https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers-alito-gifts-disclosure-alaska-singer-23b51eda https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers...

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

I was going to recommend SCOTUSBlog and then I noticed it's the same person... https://www.scotusblog.com/ https://www.scotusblog.com/ Volokh Conspiracy is also great https://reason.com/volokh/ https://reason.com/volokh/

cvoss 2y ago

See also the Advisory Opinions podcast if you like to consume your analysis of court arguments and opinions by listening.