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

Post by adastra22 » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #169

xhevahir wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not even the writing - it can be blatant misinterpretation. There's precedential opinion that states that you can't ignore the letter of the law to pursue it's spirt. Yet there's a law that has "reasonable care" in it, but the precedential opinion on that is that it's a strict liability offense because 'applying reasonable care would frustrate enforcing the legislature's intent'... The judges don't care. They're…

Post by KronisLV » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:27 AM UTC

gault8121 wrote: post #224

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…

Here are the text complexity scores from different measures for this text. Flesch Reading Ease score: -24 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: impossible to comprehend. Gunning Fog: 40.7 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: EXTREMELY difficult to read. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 35.7 Grade level: College Graduate and above. The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college The SMOG Index: 25 Grade…

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #212

mannykannot wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but as you say, the revolution started out the way rayiner describes it, and it seems very plausible that the 2nd. amendment was motivated by that specific circumstance. Personally, I think we would have been better off without the 2nd amendment, and the framers of the constitution may not have foreseen the role it has come to play in politics (if so, it would be far from the only case), but I cannot fi…

The framers didn’t anticipate armies becoming permanent institutions, which is why we have a “no standing army” requirement that we just kind of ignore. But even that only makes the second amendment clearer: if you don’t have a standing army, who has the guns? The answer is militias comprised of heavily armed citizenry.

Post by oblio » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

alar44 wrote: post #228

sseagull wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long, readable phrases (in literature, anyway) tend to be made up of independent clauses with semicolons, and are perfectly understandable (to me, anyway). I sometimes prefer long sentences in some forms of literature - short sentences can be choppy and halting. "He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obdur…

Those semicolons can be replaced with periods and negates your point. That's just a string of ideas, not really one logical sentence.

Post by dmurray » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 7:06 AM UTC

bagels wrote: post #245

alar44 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that our legal system should be understandable by the dumbest person? I don't see how that's feasible or desirable.

Everyone is subject to the law. How can you have any hope of following a law you cannot read? It certainly should be a goal.