#Incomprehensible Style

[xtruss]

Study Explains Why Laws Are Written In An Incomprehensible Style

— By Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 19 August 2024

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable?

MIT cognitive scientists believe they have uncovered the answer to that question. Just as "magic spells" use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority, they conclude.

In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that even non-lawyers use this type of language when asked to write laws.

"People seem to understand that there's an implicit rule that this is how laws should sound, and they write them that way," says Edward Gibson, an MIT Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Senior Author of the Study.

Eric Martinez Ph.D. is the lead author of the study. Francis Mollica, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, is also an author of the paper.

Casting a Legal Spell

Gibson's research group has been studying the unique characteristics of legalese since 2020, when Martinez came to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) after earning a law degree from Harvard Law School. In a 2022 study, Gibson, Martinez, and Mollica analyzed legal contracts totaling about 3.5 million words, comparing them with other types of writing, including movie scripts, newspaper articles, and academic papers.

That analysis revealed that legal documents frequently have long definitions inserted in the middle of sentences—a feature known as "center-embedding." Linguists have previously found that this kind of structure can make text much more difficult to understand.

"Legalese somehow has developed this tendency to put structures inside other structures, in a way which is not typical of human languages," Gibson says.

In a follow-up study published in 2023, the researchers found that legalese also makes documents more difficult for lawyers to understand. Lawyers tended to prefer plain English versions of documents, and they rated those versions to be just as enforceable as traditional legal documents.

"Lawyers also find legalese to be unwieldy and complicated," Gibson says. "Lawyers don't like it, laypeople don't like it, so the point of this current paper was to try and figure out why they write documents this way."

The researchers had a couple of hypotheses for why legalese is so prevalent. One was the "copy and edit hypothesis," which suggests that legal documents begin with a simple premise, and then additional information and definitions are inserted into already existing sentences, creating complex center-embedded clauses.

"We thought it was plausible that what happens is you start with an initial draft that's simple, and then later you think of all these other conditions that you want to include. And the idea is that once you've started, it's much easier to center-embed that into the existing provision," says Martinez, who is now a Fellow and Instructor at the University of Chicago Law School.

However, the findings ended up pointing toward a different hypothesis, the so-called "Magic Spell Hypothesis." Just as magic spells are written with a distinctive style that sets them apart from everyday language, the convoluted style of legal language appears to signal a special kind of authority, the researchers say.

"In English culture, if you want to write something that's a magic spell, people know that the way to do that is you put a lot of old-fashioned rhymes in there. We think maybe center-embedding is signaling legalese in the same way," Gibson says.

In this study, the researchers asked about 200 non-lawyers (Native Speakers of English Living in the United States, Who Were Recruited Through a Crowdsourcing Site Called Prolific), to write two types of texts. In the first task, people were told to write laws prohibiting crimes such as drunk driving, burglary, arson, and drug trafficking. In the second task, they were asked to write stories about those crimes.

To test the copy and edit hypothesis, half of the participants were asked to add additional information after they wrote their initial law or story.

The researchers found that all of the subjects wrote laws with center-embedded clauses, regardless of whether they wrote the law all at once or were told to write a draft and then add to it later. And, when they wrote stories related to those laws, they wrote in much plainer English, regardless of whether they had to add information later.

"When writing laws, they did a lot of center-embedding regardless of whether or not they had to edit it or write it from scratch. And in that narrative text, they did not use center-embedding in either case," Martinez says.

In another set of experiments, about 80 participants were asked to write laws, as well as descriptions that would explain those laws to visitors from another country. In these experiments, participants again used center-embedding for their laws, but not for the descriptions of those laws.

The Origins of Legalese

Gibson's lab is now investigating the origins of center-embedding in legal documents. Early American laws were based on British law, so the researchers plan to analyze British laws to see if they feature the same kind of grammatical construction. And going back much further, they plan to analyze whether Center-Embedding is found in the Hammurabi Code, the earliest known set of laws, which dates to around 1750 BC.

"There may be just a stylistic way of writing from back then, and if it was seen as successful, people would use that style in other languages," Gibson says. "I would guess that it's an accidental property of how the laws were written the first time, but we don't know that yet."

The researchers hope that their work, which has identified specific aspects of legal language that make it more difficult to understand, will motivate lawmakers to try to make laws more comprehensible.

Efforts to write legal documents in plainer language date to at least the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon declared that federal regulations should be written in "Layman's Terms." However, legal language has changed very little since that time.

"We have learned only very recently what it is that makes legal language so complicated, and therefore I am optimistic about being able to change it," Gibson says.

[vintage-tigre]

[ontheknifesedge]

44 - Leonard Bones McCoy !

44. all-american bitch - olivia rodrigo

I GOT CLASS AND INTEGRITY, JUST LIKE A GODDAMN KENNEDY, I SWEAR!

I’M A PERFECT ALL-AMERICAN BITCH!

[indigoipsum]

I wanted to try to start a rumor on here that there’s a s2 reboot but I did that w some friends and then felt bad. Here’s Alois in the Cloverworks style for shiggles (and maybe an animation I want to work on later)

[sarchasmmm]

I really don't think that Sunday is as formal and uptight as people think he is.

Like. Don't get me wrong. He IS formal and uptight. But I think a lot of people reduce him to being ONLY super formal all the time when I just don't think that's true.

This is an odd example but

"My sister and me" is NOT correct grammar. It was smth that really stuck out to me when I played the 2.2 quest bc what do you mean the guy that always has to be Perfect and Presentable is using incorrect grammar.

There's also the time he says "what's up?" To Robin. Like, he uses casual phrases.

I feel like I could analyse this deeper but I actually can't be bothered rn so instead I will just say that in fan content people should just have him drop random slang words in every so often I think it would be funny

[ryo-maybe]

Regardless of everything I understand why geequacks took off with some people. What I cannot wrap my head around is the heaps of inexplicably unironic shippy fanart involving Shuuji and Machu. I've seen fanart of LycoReco's Chisato paired up with that one bootleg Hazama-looking guy from the series that I can make more sense of than people earnestly invested in two characters who showed less chemistry on screen than the two mains from WfM did for the entirety of that show's second season

[spadeworks]

i absolutely did not post this a day late, i would never miss shintaro kisaragi's birthday.

[tungle-scant-sequels]

márquez definitely just had comedic intentions w/ her but remedios the beauty is a fantastic character. she's so real

[vaguely-concerned]

I don't know what I love more, the fact that as rook you can make a statement in NO uncertain terms that you are NOT responsible one way or the other for the theological implications of the shit you're discovering in the 'regrets of the dread wolf' memories. not my jurisdiction. quite simply none of my business. not my chantry circus not my chantry monkeys. irrelevant to the matter at hand here we'll kill that god if we get to him he can get in line. or if the best thing about it is seeing the lone little 'lucanis approves' that pops up right after choosing it. corvid with a knife about to commit deicide keeping it real and sensibly, pragmatically, wilfully agnostic with me here in this magical lighthouse today

[aerequets]

The way you drew Yor in your latest Spy x PTA is so, so cute!!! I fucking love it. It's so good. Your art and your style are very clearly your own and you should be proud.

URGHSHTH...........

[dystopia-daily-trash-1]

Dangender this dangender that. Where's my philgender truthers???

[himbopunk]

veilguard shipping chart for the au where i put the rosehead guys in the veilguard (incliuding my friends oc sal! i havent drawn his da au before this but heres the angry old man <3)

i might use vika for the rook in this au but i'm leaving it blank for now because this is barely comprehensible as it is without a rook's lines tangling through it all LMAO

also!! i already posted the lil chibi heads but here's a blank template for your deranged shipping chart needs!

[thevoiceofdesertbluffs]

You can relax your grip, Sunday. I don't think anyone's taking him from you

[moo-savr]

CAN YOU DRAW CLOCK AND THE ANIMATIC THINGYY FROM ANIMATED BATTLE?????NOT FORCING OFC🎊🎊🎊

[snivel1]

Fuck it, Stefanie Pines be upon ye🗣🗣‼️💖💖

[witchblade]

there's definitely different cadences in the no punctuation posting sphere like i can understand my mutual circle no problem but sometimes ill wander out of it and realize i have to like stop and struggle my way through some people's posts despite having similar grammatical structures (no caps no commas no periods etc) it's like a different language... the posting ecosystem...