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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 understa

by 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.

by f1shy 2y ago

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.