Characteristics of legal language: precision, its devices and its defects
LUG-105 English and Legal Language, Unit I: Characteristics of legal language. · LLB · 60 min
The features that mark legal language off from everyday English - terms of art, Latin and French borrowings, archaic words, doublets and triplets, long sentences, nominalisation, the impersonal tone, repetition instead of pronouns, definitions clauses and the drafting words "shall", "may", "deemed", "notwithstanding" - and the one purpose behind them all: precision and certainty.
The lecture then turns the list round to show the defects these features create, the plain-English movement that answers them, why precision matters in contracts and statutes, and statutory interpretation (literal, golden, mischief) as a problem of language. This is the most heavily examined topic of Unit I.
Objectives
- List and illustrate the characteristics of legal language under vocabulary, grammar, style and structure.
- Explain why precision and certainty are the purpose of legal language, with statutory and contractual examples.
- Identify the defects of legalese and state what the plain-English movement proposes.
- Use the drafting words shall, may, must, deemed, notwithstanding, subject to and provided that correctly.
- Describe the literal, golden and mischief rules of interpretation with one example each.
Slides
- One purpose behind every feature: precision and certainty
- Vocabulary I: terms of art and ordinary words with special meanings
- Vocabulary II: Latin, Law French and the Indian layer
- Archaic words, formal openings, doublets and triplets
- Grammar and style: long sentences, nominalisation, the impersonal voice
- The drafting words: shall, may, must, deemed, notwithstanding, subject to, provided that
- The defects of legal language
- The plain-English movement and the Indian response
- Precision in contracts and agreements
- Statutory interpretation as a language problem: literal, golden, mischief
- Exercise: keep the precision, lose the legalese
- How the examiner asks it
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