legal language

A Statistical Picture of the Difficulty of Law

Mgr Mikołaj RYŚKIEWICZ

University of Warsaw

English abstract: The incomprehensibility of law is no secret, but the depth of this incomprehensibility has remained insufficiently explored. Previous studies have supported quantitative aspects either superficially or without delving into their method. This work aims to expand the toolkit for analysing legal language in terms of its comprehensibility and demonstrate the results of using these tools. Dozens of Polish laws selected for the study were fully processed and analysed using the Jasnopis application. The results were then reviewed and analysed in the context of linguistic and social studies. The analyses: (1) confirm the profound incomprehensibility of legal language, regardless of the yardstick used; (2) quantify this incomprehensibility in relation to general Polish, providing a picture of how remote legal language is from reality; (3) point to the intrinsic peculiarity of legal language, as manifested in the variation of intelligibility and morphological parameters depending on the branch of law; (4) reveal the potential in studying legal language with indicators other than those commonly used. The research opens
up the field for a broader-than-before discussion of the communicative quality of legislation and, thanks to the context of general Polish, helps outline the socially relevant consequences in the form of linguistic alienation of law recipients.

Keywords: legal language, incomprehensibility of law, nominal style, jurislinguistics

Language: Polish

Published: Number 4(37)/2023, pp. 79-97.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2023.4.79

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This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Terminological Consistency in the Legal System. A View at the Problem of Interpretation from the Perspective of Law-making Practice

Dr Marek SUSKA

Silesian University in Katowice

English abstract: The goal of the article is to determine whether the legal interpretation should be made with the assumption of consistency of terminology at the level of a branch of law or at the global level. The question is therefore whether the interpreter should presume that the legislator ‘by default’ refers those who apply the law only to the legal definitions contained in a certain, most general act within one branch of law, or whether, regardless of the branch, the legislator always uses a uniform terminology. An analysis of the law-making practice may be a source of useful cues to answer this question. First, the article reconstructs the requirements imposed on the drafters by the Principles of Legislative Technique. Secondly, several dozen acts passed by the Sejm of the 7th and 8th term of office are examined in terms of the presence of ‘definitional’ references to acts from the same branch of law and acts from another branch of law. In this way, it is established that only the presumption of a legal act maintain terminological consistency with legal definitions set out in the basic act for a given branch of law seems to be legitimate. The basic act should not be understood in an institutional way, but as one relating to a quasi-branch. The article also identifies at least some cases where it is justified or unjustified to use ‘explicit’ references to point out branch-level or global terminological consistency. The results of the analyses may find application in the discussion on the meaning of the directive of legal language in the theory and practice of interpretation, as well as in the theory and practice of legislation – in determining when it is necessary to use a provision referring to a legal definition.

Keywords: terminological consistency, provisions referring to other provisions, legal language, law-making, legal interpretation, system of law

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(34)/2023, pp.58-71

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280//AFPiFS.2023.1.58

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Number of downloads: 211

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

In the Margins of the Concept of the Language of Legal Norms

Prof. dr hab. Andrzej Malinowski

University of Warsaw

English abstract: The article presents an attempt at an alternative approach to the scholarly interpretation model, in which statements expressed in the language of norms have been replaced by statements in the language of lawyers. In the proposed approach, the result of the interpretation of a legal text is a set of sentences of the lawyers’ language stating that a specific general legal norm applies at the moment of interpretation due to the validity of the relevant fragment of the legal text. The whole (complete) set of statements in the lawyers’ language whereby legal norms are held to be valid is treated by lawyers as a description of the legal system. It is stated that, considering the law as a system, neither case law nor scholarship in practice refers to the language of norms, but to the results of interpretations described in the lawyers’ language. However, the paradigm of scholarly interpretation using the concept of the language of norms has its undoubted cognitive value and is useful for didactic purposes.

Keywords: scholarly interpretation, legal system, legal language, lawyers’ language, language of norms

Language: Polish

Published: Number 4(25)/2020, pp. 54-64.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2020.4.54

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Number of downloads: 386

Against a local theory of meaning for the legal language – some general remarks

Mgr Paweł Banaś

Jagiellonian University

English abstract: Within philosophy of law as well as philosophy of language one can find a view suggesting that legal and natural languages have two different theories of meaning: meaning externalism and intentionalism accordingly. This view can be interpreted as a metaphysical one, ie. that there are two different kinds of facts that determine that expressions of legal and natural languages mean whatever they mean. For natural language these facts would be intentions of the speaker. Such a view of natural language seem intuitive as the aim of a communication is usually trying to grasp whatever a speaker has in mind. Such a view proves, however, problematic for the legal language. Meaning exteralism for legal language, on the other hand, allows for law to be objective. But it must show how its expressions are meaningful (as content is usually closely related to intentionality). As a result, a satisfactory theory of facts constituting linguistic meaning might require a pressuposition that meaning (also legal or natural) is a social artifact: its content is constituted by some kind of collective intentionality of language users. This solves a numer of problems with both intentionalism and meaning externalism – but also creates new ones that might require further studies.

Keywords: intentionalism, meaning externalism, legal language, natural language, theory of meaning

Language: Polish

Received: 10.10.2016
Accepted: 12.11.2016

Published: Number 1(14)/2017, pp. 7-16.

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Number of downloads: 41