Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language • Hacker News Board

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#141

Post by hackingthenews » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

xhevahir wrote: post #94

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

The assumption of most of the comments here is that bad writing is a matter of incompetence, but in the case of public policy I think Hanlon's Razor no longer applies. Given what we know about Texas politics and American ballot measures in general, it's quite possible that the ambiguity was introduced deliberately to give big landowners (or rather their lawyers) extra wiggle room. If that's true then the only communi…

Hanlon's razor never applies when politics or money is involved. Best to just suspend your judgement instead of giving politicians the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#142

Post by bhawks » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #50

Lawyer and contract-drafting teacher here. The biggest problem with unreadable contracts is that we have too many L.O.A.D.s: Lazy Or Arrogant Drafters. (You can decide for yourself: L.O.A.D. of what?) There's a relevant Dilbert cartoon: [0] To simplify contract language, the biggest bang for the buck comes from SSSP: Short, Single-Subject Paragraphs, which are much easier to read; to review and revise during contract…

In your experience how much of this is attributable to a party of the contract trying to sneak favorable terms into the agreement? Generally I am a fan of Hanlon's razor, assume ignorance/stupidity over maliciousness, but given the nature of the subject matter I am very suspicious.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#143

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

xhevahir wrote: post #94

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

The assumption of most of the comments here is that bad writing is a matter of incompetence, but in the case of public policy I think Hanlon's Razor no longer applies. Given what we know about Texas politics and American ballot measures in general, it's quite possible that the ambiguity was introduced deliberately to give big landowners (or rather their lawyers) extra wiggle room. If that's true then the only communi…

Looking at Texas school funding laws, I expect the complexity is aimed at Charter Schools.

I didn't look into the details, but schools with poor attendance can have their "excess" local revenues claimed by the state (state law specifies what excess means). Charter schools don't have local funding (and can play games to pick their students).

The measure above appears to be for adjusting a relief measure for the elderly and disabled downwards when their obligation is reduced (which if it only reduces the relief, could reduce it to 0 over time).

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#144

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

_raoulcousins wrote: post #83

zo1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever wrote or approved that should be fired. Whether they are a lawyer or politician, it matters not. To parse it one needs to write it out, draw brackets around concepts, and then add lines between the potentially-grouped concepts because there is so much in-between that you forget it all by the time you get to the end.

Funny that I was about to comment "it doesn't seem so bad, just draw a directed graph to work it out". Reading your comment it does seem a little unreasonable.

I'm not 100% certain I understand it, but I see 3 sections in there:

The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of

a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled

to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#145

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

Are you an attorney?

I have a relative who worked in bill drafting for a legislature. The structure of this stuff is sort of it’s own art driven by the deadlines as a lot of legislation is associated with things with deadlines like budget bills.

This isn’t the king’s English, but it isn’t egregiously unclear if you understand what it’s about.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#146

Post by jakub_g » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

My father recently got a letter from a law office. What it wanted to convey was "we saw you sent a bank transfer to Bob lately..." (this was not stated implicitly but it's the only way how they could get address to send the letter) - "FYI Bob owes us 10k, please don't send him any money anymore, instead send it to us directly; or if you send to his account we'll take it anyway" (now that I'm thinking about it, this could be a nice scam tactic, but I'm pretty sure that one was legit).

Anyway, the letter was written in such lingo that on first reading it was as if my father owed Bob 10k. Some elderly person receiving such letter could have had a stroke.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#147

Post by hnick » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

I wonder if it's a programmer thing, but as I read that I realised I was mentally bracketing related words together almost like a token parser to build a syntax tree.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#148

Post by watwut » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #126

bluechair wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rewritten the clause by moving "prepositional phrases" into the noun phrases to avoid as much nesting as possible. For example, instead of saying "the husband of the woman, I'd replace it with the woman's husband." Here's what I think it says: "This constitutional amendment authorizes the legislature to set the ad valorem taxes total reduction amounts that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary publ…

Aren't such long phrases horrible writing, kind of by default?

You can have long readable phrases. The long phrase is bad rule is just beginner helper, nothing more nothing less.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#149

Post by Dracophoenix » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #115

cwillu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal peave is “utilize”: it's just an excuse to use the letter “z” in a sentence.

Great example. Also "access" as in "they can access health care." How about "they can receive health care"? "They can get health care"?

I'm not a doctor, but there are differences between the two words: "access" generally refers to capability and/or proximity whereas "receive" generally refers to eligibility for a particular service or prescription.

The word "get", is a vague expression of either of the former two words, but in common parlance is understood to be the latter.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#150

Post by zaphar » Sun, Sep 18, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #133

paulryanrogers wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what hope is there for a layperson to do anything of significance without first having a lawyer vet the EULA? Such agreements are already absurdly long for some of the most trivial services or products. The answer cannot become "be a lawyer or rich enough to afford retaining one".

> Then what hope is there for a layperson to do anything of significance without first having a lawyer vet the EULA? I think this focuses attention on the wrong thing. A counterparty that is acting in good faith will not put absurdly long legalese in a contract, because if they are acting in good faith, it is in their interest to reach a genuine meeting of the minds with you, because fulfilling the contract will bene…

By this reasoning the vast majority of lawyers drafting contracts are not acting in good faith because the vast majority of lawyers are drafting obtuse unreadable contracts. Which is perhaps the case but the current reality is that encountering readable contracts is the exception not the common case.