Would you rather have the laws written in such ambiguous terms that you
can't possibly tell whether or not you've broken one no matter how much you
study?
Actually, you do have that problem because the laws
themselves are usually not written in legal jargon. They're
written in more-or-less ordinary English, by non-lawyers, and figuring out how
to interpret them is often the most difficult and confusing part of a judge's
job. Legal jargon appears in the courtroom, in court proceedings and filings,
written by lawyers for judges. So you're worried about the wrong thing.
I worry about ambiguous laws more than I worry about incomprehensible
legal terminology.
In any case, legal terminology is based on
English--probably more so than your average programming language, and a lot of
software is loosely comprehensible to a literate non-programmer. The nuances
may be lost, but the basic concepts often show through. I don't think you need
to be a programmer to understand the rangeCheck function that featured so
prominently in the Oracle v Google case, for example--though I doubt you could
write your own, as the judge did, if you hadn't studied some
programming.
If I were you, I'd worry more about contracts, which
usually are written in jargon, than about laws. But at least with a contract,
it's not binding unless you accept it, and you can ask a lawyer to help you
interpret before you sign, if you're really unsure.
But bottom line, we
are talking about jargon here. Not Lower Upper Middle High Martian.
It's a specialized language, not an alien one. No, the situation's not ideal,
but the alternatives are potentially just as bad, maybe even worse. I think
there's bigger issues in this world than a bit of precisely-defined legal
jargon.
---
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for it makes them
soggy and hard to light. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
| 
