{"id":4425,"date":"2009-03-27T16:14:45","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T21:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=4425"},"modified":"2009-03-27T16:14:45","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T21:14:45","slug":"the-concise-gibberish-of-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/03\/the-concise-gibberish-of-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The Concise Gibberish of the Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"File:LangensteinsAisleJuly2008.jpg\"If you like thinking about the way lawyers use words and how and why that usage is different from the way normal people, er, I mean, non-lawyers use words, take a moment this Friday afternoon to read Language Log’s take<\/a>\u00a0on the New Jersey case of a slip-and-fall verdict overturned<\/a> because a law professor subsequently wrote an article about his experience on the jury, including his efforts to help explain what “proximate cause” means.<\/p>\n

Seton Hall Professor Robert J. Martin<\/a>\u00a0served as jury foreman in this grocery store slip-and-fall case. Subsequently he wrote about the experience for the New Jersey Law Journal. \u00a0Reading that article led an appeals court to overturn the verdict he was involved in reaching.<\/p>\n

In Language Log, Robert Shuy points out that,<\/p>\n

I\u2019d guess that most of us, perhaps lawyers included, don\u2019t have a very good idea of what \u201cproximate cause\u201d means. The late highly respected legal analyst, David Mellinkoff, called this term of art \u201cconcise gibberish\u201d (The Language of the Law,<\/em>((1963, p. 401).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well put. In fact, I’d remove the “perhaps,” because no one can have a very good idea of what “proximate cause” means. \u00a0The more you study it, the more you realize that it is inherently imprecise, purposefully hard to understand. \u00a0It lacks an inherent meaning. \u00a0Like many legal terms of art (and other professional jargon), “proximate cause” defines a blurry line. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Shuy makes a useful point about the silliness of barring jurors from getting useful definitions of legal jargon, ending the post this way:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So how\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0jurors supposed to interpret judges\u2019 confusing and complex jury instructions? The Barber jury got an unexpected bonus by having an attorney help them figure some of it out. It seems unfortunate, if not unproductive, that the standards of law apparently prohibit juries from learning about legal concepts that are crucial to the trial but unknown to them. It must have been difficult for Martin to tell them something like, \u201cIt\u2019s concise gibberish and an elusive term of art.\u201d No matter. Even if Martin had been able to give his fellow jury members a precise, non-elusive, non-gibberish explanation, he apparently deprived the defendant of a fair trial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s got to be a meaningful lesson here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps the most meaningful lesson is that such jargon should be removed from jury instructions altogether, replaced with plain language, as plain language revisions of jury instructions<\/a> try to accomplish.<\/p>\n

But I wonder if there is also a lesson here for lawyers. \u00a0Of course, good lawyers often have to use the relevant jargon, because the cases we rely upon use it, and we need to mimic that language to connect our arguments to that precedent and to make our arguments heard. \u00a0But if the law concerning proximate cause is any indication, the law’s saturation with concise gibberish gets in the way of lawyers’ and judges’ understanding as much as it did these jurors’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you like thinking about the way lawyers use words and how and why that usage is different from the way normal people, er, I mean, non-lawyers use words, take a moment this Friday afternoon to read Language Log’s take\u00a0on the New Jersey case of a slip-and-fall verdict overturned because a law professor subsequently wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-practice","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}