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> First, it's not the (de facto) national language, which infringes on one's fundamental right to read the laws of the land... Legaleese requires you to take y

> First, it's not the (de facto) national language, which infringes on one's fundamental right to read the laws of the land... Legaleese requires you to take years of law classes to even understand, and makes the same problem. I think it's more accessible to run something through a compiler...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lostlogin 13y ago
It might take years to become a lawyer, but I bet their are more than a few people here who have spotted an error (international or accidental) in a contract that has passed under the eyes if a lawyer or two. My wife and have caught several major errors in our time that could have cost us a lot of money. There is no substitute for a careful reading of a contract, legal training optional.
IvyMike 13y ago
> Legaleese requires you to take years of law classes to even understand This is why I'm against EULAs. As a non-lawyer, it's an asymmetrical game--I have no idea what the legaleese I'm agreeing to actually means in a court.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Legaleese requires you to take years of law classes to even understand No it doesn't.
jarrett 13y ago
I've never taken a law class, but I've read and understood many, many statutes and contracts. I'm sure you could too. Does that mean all legal drafting is clear? No. But much of it is sufficiently clear for a literate person to understand. By way of example, I've chosen a passage from the Illinois criminal code, more or less at random: "Theft of property not from the person and not exceeding $500 in value is a Class 4 felony if the theft was committed in a school or place of worship or if the theft was of governmental property." This is a typical example of legalese. It bakes several conditions into one sentence: 1) not from the person, 2) value under $500, 3) in a school, 4) in a place of worship, 5) on government property. Most legal writing I've encountered is at roughly this level of complexity. Certainly, there's a lot of logic packed into that one sentence. There's much more to parse out than there is in a typical newspaper sentence. But I'm willing to bet most people can read that law and understand what it means. (Not that you'd necessarily know what a Class 4 felony is. But you'd know some of the circumstances under which a theft qualifies as one.)
btilly 13y ago
The problem is that legalese is specially designed to make meaning today out of decisions made a century ago based on laws written over 2 centuries ago which inherit from a common law framework that came to this continent about 3 centuries ago and dates back to precedents that predate the modern English language. If we were to make everything be written in normal English, the same problem would eventually re-emerge.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lostlogin 13y ago

It might take years to become a lawyer, but I bet their are more than a few people here who have spotted an error (international or accidental) in a contract that has passed under the eyes if a lawyer or two. My wife and have caught several major errors in our time that could have cost us a lot of money. There is no substitute for a careful reading of a contract, legal training optional.

IvyMike 13y ago

> Legaleese requires you to take years of law classes to even understand This is why I'm against EULAs. As a non-lawyer, it's an asymmetrical game--I have no idea what the legaleese I'm agreeing to actually means in a court.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Legaleese requires you to take years of law classes to even understand No it doesn't.

jarrett 13y ago

I've never taken a law class, but I've read and understood many, many statutes and contracts. I'm sure you could too. Does that mean all legal drafting is clear? No. But much of it is sufficiently clear for a literate person to understand. By way of example, I've chosen a passage from the Illinois criminal code, more or less at random: "Theft of property not from the person and not exceeding $500 in value is a Class 4 felony if the theft was committed in a school or place of worship or if the theft was of governmental property." This is a typical example of legalese. It bakes several conditions into one sentence: 1) not from the person, 2) value under $500, 3) in a school, 4) in a place of worship, 5) on government property. Most legal writing I've encountered is at roughly this level of complexity. Certainly, there's a lot of logic packed into that one sentence. There's much more to parse out than there is in a typical newspaper sentence. But I'm willing to bet most people can read that law and understand what it means. (Not that you'd necessarily know what a Class 4 felony is. But you'd know some of the circumstances under which a theft qualifies as one.)

btilly 13y ago

The problem is that legalese is specially designed to make meaning today out of decisions made a century ago based on laws written over 2 centuries ago which inherit from a common law framework that came to this continent about 3 centuries ago and dates back to precedents that predate the modern English language. If we were to make everything be written in normal English, the same problem would eventually re-emerge.