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Steven Conner Inner circle 2720 Posts |
At some time or other in our lives, we all need the services of an attorney. I have many precious friends who earn their living at the “ Bar of Justice.” I have asked a number of them just why lawyers, in their written documents, should resort to the use of a language that is only distantly related to good English.
One who hears or reads the oral arguments of a talented lawyer is impressed by its lucidity, simplicity, and force. But if one turns to the indictment, complaint, petition, brief, or other legal documents in the case, one is amazed to think that the two were the product of the same mind. The former is excellent ENGLISH and the latter is mere JARGON. For example, if you wanted to give your friends an orange, you would simply say, “ have an orange.” But if you engage a lawyer to put the transaction in legal verbiage, it would assume this ponderous form: “ I hereby give and convey to you, all and singular, my estates and interests, right and title, claim and advantage of and in said orange, together with all its rind, juice, pulp, or pips, anything herein before or hereafter or in any other means of whatever notice or kind whatsoever to the contrary in any wise not withstanding.” And then after all this, the chances are that another lawyer may come along, and with more jargon of the same sort, take the orange away from you. So it is with our legal friends.
"The New York Papers," Mark Twain once said,"have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted; it is the way they feel about it, and they show it by always sending to me when they get uneasy. "
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Bob Clayton Loyal user 245 Posts |
Add to that a page of definitions and another on the terms of arbitrating any disputes.
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Jerrine Special user Busking is work. 629 Posts |
All this talk of losing oranges has got me switching to apples.
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rossmacrae Inner circle Arlington, Virginia 2475 Posts |
I asked a lawyer friend long ago. She told me (okay, she advised, conveyed, instructed and/or delivered verbiage attesting to the following):
Legal language, like medical language, is designed to "cover all the bases" (if you don't cover 'em all, the exceptions will surely come back to bite you sooner or later) and to link a document's provisions firmly to established law (issues that have already been decided, tested and firmly resisted challenges.) By way of example, I was reminded of the Mayor's and Lawyer's lines in the intro to 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead': "Then this is a day of independence / for all the munchkins and their descendants." "If any." The same 'if any' is in my own will for one reason: if I have no descendants, or if none survive me, the clause containing 'if any' merely fails to take effect. Without the 'if any', there's noplace for my estate to go unless I have surviving descendants, and that defect might be used to invalidate my entire will or to thoroughly confuse the disposition of my estate (you can't enforce something that makes no sense). Of course, legal language tends to be opaque to both laymen and attornays - my mother's living trust was so poorly written (by a firm that packaged this kind of thing) that it had major internal conflicts, and its provisions were open to serious question - it took months and $$$ to sort out whether the document allowed me to control, after her death, an asset that the bank dearly wanted to hold onto forever (and mishandle in the future as it had for past years). The bank spent $$$ (conveniently drawn out of that asset) getting a written opinion on the matter, and I spent $$$ getting my own attorney's opinion (which was 'promise them anything, then once you've got ahold of the money do whatever you please, it'll stand up in court if it comes to that, and at least you'll have my written opinion to offer as backup'). |
pghdude80 New user Pittsburgh 72 Posts |
Yep...lawyers have to talk that way to cover all the bases. Read some complicated scholarship sometime and it's the same. There can be absolutely no ambiguity.
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Yup, Ross said it pretty well. You really can't fully appreciate it until you're immersed in it. For example, picture a city ordinance that states: "All liquor stores must be closed at midnight." Now, "closed" can be looked at as a verb, or as an adverb; that is to say, one might say, "I closed the door," or "The door is closed." This distinction makes for some interesting ambiguities in the case of the liquor store. If we're looking at it as a verb, the shopkeeper who closes his store at 11:00 and goes home for the night is in violation of the ordinance; the stores are supposed to be closed at 12, and he's closing his store at 11. On the other hand, common sense might dictate that the word is clearly intended as an adverb --the store has to be in a state of closure at midnight. In which case the shopkeeper who closes down at 11:59, only to reopen at 12:01, is NOT in violation; at 12:00, the store WAS, in fact, closed. Silliness? Yes and no; it's unconstitutional to hold one criminally liable, for instance, for violating a law that is either vague or overbroad. Many legal documents are over the top, it's true, but it's extremely difficult to achieve the desired measure of specificity.
Try writing a model statute addressed at your favorite crime that really does criminalize everything you want it to and nothing that you DON'T want it to, and does so without being vague, ambiguous, or self-referential. It can be a challenge. I taught law to high school students this year...here's an exercise that some other people in the same program did -- They have their students write up a contract for the teacher to make them a sandwich. Then, depending on what material terms the students leave out, the teacher makes a sandwich accordingly. So you have the 1/2-inch by 1/2-inch sandwich (forgot to mention size), the peanut butter and mustard sandwich (forgot to mention filler), and so on.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
rossmacrae Inner circle Arlington, Virginia 2475 Posts |
Quote:
On 2007-06-29 00:32, LobowolfXXX wrote: That reminds me about the (disingenuous) outrage from a few people once who complained that the Army had a multi-page, thousands-of-words specification for chocolate chip cookies. But without it, providing companies could point to their contracts and claim, correctly, that they had delivered what was ordered, despite the product being woefully inadequate. |
Justin Style Inner circle 2010 Posts |
What do you call 4 lawyers burried up to their neck in sand?
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Doug Higley 1942 - 2022 7152 Posts |
My footprint.
Higley's Giant Flea Pocket Zibit
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Steven Conner Inner circle 2720 Posts |
Quote:
On 2007-06-29 14:26, Justin Style wrote: Obviously not enough sand!
"The New York Papers," Mark Twain once said,"have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted; it is the way they feel about it, and they show it by always sending to me when they get uneasy. "
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gaddy Inner circle Agent of Chaos 3526 Posts |
Quote:
On 2007-06-28 23:19, pghdude80 wrote: excepting, of course, the ambiguity caused by the jargon...
*due to the editorial policies here, words on this site attributed to me cannot necessarily be held to be my own.*
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