About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


6 Psych., Crime & L. 1 (2000)

handle is hein.journals/pcyceadl6 and id is 1 raw text is: Psychology, Crime & Law, Vol. 6, pp. 1-20 0 2000 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V. Reprints available directly from the publisher Published by license under Photocopying permitted by license only the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint, part of The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group. Printed in Malaysia. LEGAL EASE AND 'LEGALESE' JAMES HARTLEY Department of Psychology, Keele University, Staffordshire, STS SBG, UK This paper reviews the evidence for Redish's (1979) seven propositions concerning legal text. These propositions are: (i) many legal documents cannot be read and understood by lay persons; (ii) people without legal training have to read and understand legal documents; (iii) much legal writing is unintelligible, even to lawyers; (iv) tradition - not necessity - and a lack of understanding of the audience - are the major reasons that legal language is so obscure; (v) legal language can be made clear without losing its precision; (vi) it is not the technical vocabulary but the complex sentence structure that makes legal writing difficult to understand; and (vii) clarity is not the same as simplicity, brevity or 'Plain English'. The evidence supports all of these propositions, except perhaps the fifth and sixth. The research shows that writing legal text requires more attention to be given to readers than is typically the case. Key words: legalese; plain English; legal drafting; writing; readability. Many legal documents are unnecessarily lengthy, over written, self-conscious and repetitious ... They suffer from elaborate and often unnecessary cross-referencing. They continue to use tautologies ... They retain archaic phrases ... They use supposedly technical terms and foreign (Latin) words and phrases ... even when English equivalents are readily available ... Language which suffers from some or all of these defects is called 'legalese'. Linguists regard it as an identifiably different dialect or class of Language. (Law Reform Commission of Australia, 1987, p. 11) INTRODUCTION In this paper I want to comment on how lawyers and psychologists have contributed in the past and might contribute in the future to making legal text easier to understand. In particular, I want to consider some of the advantages and some of the limitations of 'Plain English' in this respect. I take as my starting point seven assertions made by Redish (1979). These are: 1. Many legal documents cannot be read and understood by lay persons. 2. People without legal training have to read and understand legal documents. 3. Much legal writing is unintelligible even to lawyers. 1