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Full-Text Articles in Law
Review Of Draft No. 4, Beth Hirschfelder Wilensky
Review Of Draft No. 4, Beth Hirschfelder Wilensky
Reviews
"Draft No. 4" is an essay collection by John McPhee about his long career as a journalist for The New Yorker. This book review uses the essay collection as a jumping-off point to discuss the similarities and differences between legal writing and long-form journalism, and what legal writers can learn about the writing process from journalists like McPhee.
An Old-Fashioned View Of The Nature Of Law, James Boyd White
An Old-Fashioned View Of The Nature Of Law, James Boyd White
Articles
The law is a not an abstract system or scheme of rules, as we often speak of it, but an inherently unstable structure of thought and expression. It is built upon a distinct set of dynamic and dialogic tensions, which include: tensions between ordinary language and legal language; between legal language and the specialized discourses of other fields; between language itself and the mute world that lies beneath it; between opposing lawyers; between conflicting but justifiable ways of giving meaning to the rules and principles of law; between substantive and procedural lines of thought; between law and justice; between the …
Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity In The Logical Structure Of Legal Drafting By Means Of The Prescribed Definitions Of The A-Hohfeld Structural Language, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Articles
Two principal sources of imprecision in legal drafting (vagueness and ambiguity) are identified and illustrated. Virtually all of the ambiguity imprecision encountered in legal discourse is ambiguity in the language used to express logical structure, and virtually all of· the imprecision resulting is inadvertent. On the other hand, the imprecision encountered in legal writing that results from vagueness is frequently, if not most often, included there deliberately; the drafter has considered it and decided that the vague language· best accomplishes the purpose at hand. This paper focuses on the use of some defined terminology for minimizing inadvertent ambiguity in the …
Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Book Chapters
The use of the AUTOPROLOG system to generate automatically a legal expert system is described in this chapter. The interpretation of a statutory or other legal rule by one expert (or by the consensus of a group of experts) expressed in a normalized form is the only input needed by the AUTOPROLOG system (which includes Turbo Prolog, the AUTOPRO program, and some data files) to produce automatically a computer program that is an expert system for that legal rule. The process for producing a legal expert system for Section 213.1 of the Modal Penal Code, which deals with rape and …
Exploring Computer Aided Generation Of Questions For Normalizing Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Exploring Computer Aided Generation Of Questions For Normalizing Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen, Charles S. Saxon
Book Chapters
The process of normalizing a legal rule requires a drafter to indicate where the intent is to be precise and where it is to be imprecise in expressing both the between-sentence and within-sentence logical structure of that rule. Three different versions of a legal rule are constructed in the process of normalizing it: (1) the logical structure of the present version, (2) the detailed marker version, and (3) the logical structure of the normalized version. In order to construct the third version the analyst must formulate and answer specific questions about the terms that are used to express the logical …
Clarifying Legal Drafting By Well-Structuring It: An Improved Version Of The Plain Language Game, Layman E. Allen
Clarifying Legal Drafting By Well-Structuring It: An Improved Version Of The Plain Language Game, Layman E. Allen
Other Publications
In order to be plain, language should be well-structured. This is the theory upon which the PLAIN LANGUAGE Game is based. It provides those who aspire to be legal drafters with practice in constructing well-structured statements - a useful skill for expressing clear legal norms. You have already encountered the underlining of part of the term 'well-structured', 'PLAIN LANGUAGE' and 'norm', and may be wondering about it The underlining of the first two letters of each word of a term indicates that the term is a defined term and that it is being used in its defined sense. Thus, a …
The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
The Need For Clear Structure In 'Plain Language' Legal Drafting, Layman E. Allen, C. Rudy Engholm
Articles
Language is not simple. To pretend otherwise is to mislead. In practice the aspect that is handled most ineptly in written legal materials is the structure. The focus of this article is upon structure and how to improve it. At the outset, let one thing be absolutely clear. In seeking to achieve clarity of expression, those who have no more to recommend than short sentences, simple words, and readability formulas are offering a cracker in circumstances where a full gourmet feast is gleaming in the chef's eye for those with the wit but to ask for the menu. To practice …