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--I think there is a reason why legalese is not plain English This is true. Part of the precision of legalese is that the meanings of some terms have already
by jimmydddd 2y ago
--I think there is a reason why legalese is not plain English
This is true. Part of the precision of legalese is that the meanings of some terms have already been more precisely defined by the courts.
- xwiz 2y agoThis opens an interesting possibility for a purely symbol-based legal code. This would probably improve clarity when it came to legal phrases that overlap common English, and you could avoid ambiguity when it came to language constructs, like in this case[1], where some drivers were losing overtime pay because of a comma in the overtime law. [1] https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/16-1901/16-1901-2017-03-13.pdf?ts=1489437006 https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/16-190...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dongkyun 2y agoYeah, my theory on this has always been that a lot of programming efficiency gains have been the ability to unambiguously define behavior, which mostly comes from drastically restricting the possible states and inputs a program can achieve. The states and inputs that lawyers have to deal with tend to much more vague and imprecise (which is expected if you're dealing with human behavior and not text or some other encodeable input) and so have to rely on inherently ambiguous phrases like "reasonable" and "without undue delay."