Kafkaesque Legal Reality — Linguistic Exclusion
Kafkaesque Legal Reality [“The term “Kafkaesque” describes a legal reality that is illegitimate and disjointed from the idea of a uniform, legitimate system of laws.”]
Linguistic inaccessibility perpetuates the exclusion of the majority of the non-English speaking population. The Macaulay-esque colonial ideology, which equates English with intelligence, has entrenched colonial English as the official language — especially in legal and administrative contexts — further exacerbates the inequities of a broken legal and justice system. Linguistic determinism anyway holds that language determines our thoughts and perceptions, shaping our worldview in profound ways.
“In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East”. Thus ended Macaulay’s most famous minute, in 1835, a report aimed at instructing the Indian elite in the English language, in order to produce “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”.
In that contextual background. there is an urgent need to decolonize our administrative and legal language to celebrate and embrace the cultural identity embedded in the linguistic diversity of Bharat and to ensure inclusiveness in access to justice.
MIT study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style
~ Anne Trafton | MIT News | 19th August 2024
“The convoluted “legalese” used in legal documents conveys a special sense of authority, and even non-lawyers have learned to wield it. In a study appearing in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that even non-lawyers use this type of language when asked to write laws.”
“Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable? MIT cognitive scientists believe they have uncovered the answer to that question. Just as “magic spells” use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority, they conclude.”
References —
1. English in India and the Role of the Elite in the National Project [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49135307_English_in_India]
2. MIT study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style
(The convoluted “legalese” used in legal documents conveys a special sense of authority, and even non-lawyers have learned to wield it.) [https://news.mit.edu/2024/mit-study-explains-laws-incomprehensible-writing-style-0819]
3. Objection: No one can understand what you’re saying
(An MIT study identifies ways that lawyers could make their written documents easier for the average person to read.) [https://news.mit.edu/2022/legal-writing-understanding-0307]
4. Even lawyers don’t like legalese
(A new study shows lawyers find simplified legal documents easier to understand, more appealing, and just as enforceable as traditional contracts.) [https://news.mit.edu/2023/new-study-lawyers-legalese-0529]
5. Even laypeople use legalese
(Why are laws so complicated? Across two preregistered experiments, we found that people tasked with writing official laws wrote in a more convoluted manner than when tasked with writing unofficial legal texts of equivalent conceptual complexity. This tendency held constant, regardless of whether people wrote the document iteratively or from scratch. These results suggest law to be a rare exception to the general tendency in human language toward communicating efficiently, and that convoluted structures may be inserted to effectively signal the authoritative nature of the law, at the cost of increased reading difficulty. These results further suggest laws can be effectively simplified without a loss or distortion of communicative content.) [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2405564121]
About the Author —
Adv. Abhishek Kumar, Founder and Curator — The Sangyan and Project Drishtant [Prakalp Drishtant]
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Visual/Image Description [Alt Text] —
On a different bluish-grey background, there are three ChatGPT-generated pictures depicting the Kafkaesque power and bureaucracy and the logo of The Sangyan along with the following textual content — Kafkaesque Legal Reality (Title/Heading); “The convoluted “legalese” used in legal documents conveys a special sense of authority, and even non-lawyers have learned to wield it.” (Sub-title/Sub-heading); “Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable? MIT cognitive scientists believe they have uncovered the answer to that question. Just as “magic spells” use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority, they conclude.” (Body content); and “MIT Study Explains Why Laws Are Written in an Incomprehensible Style ~ Anne Trafton | MIT News | August 2024” (Source).
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