> Mostly, I think, legalese is a collection of superstitous incantations built up over millenia, which lawyers use because "you need to say it exactly like this or vague, bad stuff will happen." Except sometimes the superstitions are right.
If the American legal system is any indication, the vague, bad stuff is the desired outcome.
It's amazing the regulations that the EU has where it says "no, do not do this", and not only do people generally not do it, the people who do get caught doing it are fined into oblivion for it. There's no culture of hiring teams of lawyers to poke holes in the law to get around something society clearly desired, because the court is going to do what society desired.
Why, yes, I am talking about data privacy, but there are other examples.
> no culture of hiring teams of lawyers to poke holes in the law to get around something society clearly desired, because the court is going to do what society desired
Wat. I’ve literally seen tax laws in Germany and Sweden which could only possibly apply to one family. European law is in sans serif; that doesn’t mean it’s less convoluted than American law.
> seems like we do that not only with tax law in the US, but with every other law, too
You’re seriously arguing that the EU bureaucracy is streamlined and comprehensible without lawyers? Why do you think every rich person and powerful firm in Europe has fleets of lawyers?
I'm arguing that when court cases in the US are judged, the letter of the law (and thus all of that arcane language) matters more than the spirit of the law, while it seems to be the opposite in the EU for a lot of things.
> when court cases in the US are judged, the letter of the law (and thus all of that arcane language) matters more than the spirit of the law, while it seems to be the opposite in the EU for a lot of things
I'm watching the one where they gutted the Chevron decision because they don't want officials, nominated by the elected President, having sway over how regulations are enforced, and instead want judges (who have no real accountability past their confirmation by the Senate) to do that job instead, despite them not having any real expertise in many of the fields that the US federal government regulates.
That, to me, sounds a lot like a judiciary that wants to have things decided via the interpretation of legalese by a lawyer instead of by facts as determined by the present will of the people.
If the American legal system is any indication, the vague, bad stuff is the desired outcome.
It's amazing the regulations that the EU has where it says "no, do not do this", and not only do people generally not do it, the people who do get caught doing it are fined into oblivion for it. There's no culture of hiring teams of lawyers to poke holes in the law to get around something society clearly desired, because the court is going to do what society desired.
Why, yes, I am talking about data privacy, but there are other examples.