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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
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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.