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I think laws are inherently hard to make comprehensible because of the edge-cases they have to capture. Try https://novehiclesinthepark.com/ https://novehiclesi
by renewiltord 2y ago
I think laws are inherently hard to make comprehensible because of the edge-cases they have to capture. Try https://novehiclesinthepark.com/ https://novehiclesinthepark.com/ to see if you can come up with something that agrees with everyone.
However, the style that people use in laws is mostly historical. Almost all of these are copy-paste jobs because they are trying to not deviate from existing language - which has the big advantage that it has been interpreted to mean a certain thing. Though I have to wonder what portion of these are really that and what portion are people's belief about this being the case.
If we were to do it over, legalese would incorporate more programming language learnings. Center-embedding is obviously wrong, and I have seen more contracts use forward declaration by first defining terms and then using them. I think it's good that this study points out things like these and maybe we can improve them over time.
- jordanpg 2y agoThis is the best statement of the problem. A lot of folks on this thread are importing the idea from computers or math that there is a _right answer_ to expressing laws in written language. But this point of view ignores the vast diversity of human experience and variability that has to be governed using a few words. It is not the case that every possible edge and corner case can be anticipated ahead of time, and this would, in any event defeat the purpose of trying to make the law more clear. Maybe laws can be written more clearly or more succinctly in some cases, but the specific words, phrases, grammar, etc. chosen matter quite a lot in a common law jurisdiction. “The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Path of the Law