Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sciencedirect.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 337 posts

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

#311

Post by shadowgovt »

cycomanic wrote: post #255
rayiner wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am pretty certain that the large military powers at the time (England, France certainly Prussia) had standing armies already. So I would be highly surprised that the founders did not anticipate armies as a permanent institution. That would be a pretty big blind spot, considering they already existed.

In some ways, the Founders were delightfully naive. Kings also already existed, and they'd just thrown off control of one.

Many Founders believed a standing army to be an inherently corrupting force (if you have a warrior class, sooner or later they will make you go to war) and thought America would be better without one. Whether or not that could have been true in the abstract became irrelevant because the need to perpetually defend territory meant that there was never an opportunity to disband the Continental Army.

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

#313

Post by loughnane »

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…

That was a challenge. I just had some fun trying to make it tolerable. Not sure I made it.

> The constitutional amendment that lets the legislature lower the limit of taxes that elderly or disabled people must pay for elementary and secondary public school purposes on their residence homestead. The new limit will reflect any lowering of the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those same purposes on that homestead.

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

#314

Post by lupire »

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…

Judges get paid whether the state wins or not.

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

#315

Post by lupire »

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.

You seem to be ignoring the concept of an armory (the local Armory food hall used to hold weapons) which does not require individual ownership of the heavy arms, not a standing army.

Also there is no "no sanding Army" requirement. There is only a requirement that the army can only be funded for 2 years ahead, presumably to require ongoing consent from Legislature, to prevent a Chancellor Hitler-type situation or a President becoming King by getting a huge multi year funding and then turning against the future Legislature and the country.

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

#316

Post by lupire »

cycomanic wrote: post #255
rayiner wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am pretty certain that the large military powers at the time (England, France certainly Prussia) had standing armies already. So I would be highly surprised that the founders did not anticipate armies as a permanent institution. That would be a pretty big blind spot, considering they already existed.

They Constitution (and the framers) opposed the President having a standing army. It supported the country having one with biannual renewal of consent from Legislature for funding.

And the War of 1812 taught President Madison the danger of being under militarized and over-reliant on militias.

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

#317

Post by lupire »

Joker_vD wrote: post #265
margalabargala wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Second Amendment is a bit more confusing than at first glance. "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed" Seems nice and straightforwards, right? Trouble is, that's just one of many versions. Different states ratified slightly different versions of the Second Amendment, the main difference being the presence of a…

The (personally) funny thing about the 2nd amendment is that since I am not a native English speaker, its syntax looks broken to me. Without "since" or "because" at the beginning it reads either as a non sequitur or as a "driving by the gas station, my hat flew off" kind of sentence: the subject suddenly changes midway through and (in my native language) it's a hallmark of non-literate speech which one would really,…

Formal grammar (and spelling!) is a recent invention in USA. Language is much more fluid than many pretend and programmers expect.

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

#318

Post by lupire »

wolverine876 wrote: post #178
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…

> bad writing is a matter of incompetence Effective, clear expression needs training, practice and attention. Homo sapiens write as we do because in only 5,000 years we haven't evolved to write naturally and must labor at it. Clear writing also needs clear thought, obviously. "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."

Oh course, but lawyers do train and practice and pay attention. That's their main job.

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

#319

Post by rayiner »

shadowgovt wrote: post #310
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…

It's easy to forget that the United States of the ratification of the Constitution is a different United States than the one we live in now. Both the Civil War and the radical reinterpretations of several federal powers during the Great Depression fundamentally changed the nature of federal and state government. The Second Amemdent's in there because without it, the states wouldn't have been willing to ratify a Const…

I think that’s actually a coherent view of the 2A. But when you pull on the 14A incorporation thread quite a lot unravels with it. The Establishment Clause, for example, was intended to prevent the federal government from interfering with state established churches, some of which still existed at the time. It actually makes no sense to incorporate that provision against the states.

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

#320

Post by nicbou »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #285
oblio wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Kind of, however (and I'm not a native speaker) if it would be simplified, it would also be longer / multiple paragraphs, which will also put some people off of reading / comprehending it - especially these days, where a lot of people have very short attention spans when it comes to reading.

It's easier to lose a reader due to complexity than due to length.
Post reply on HN