Leaving aside the issues inherent in the law itself, the judge over simplified the two clauses shown in the picture: “During and in relation to” as well as “Any Crime of Violence or Drug Trafficking Crime.” HIS/HER SENTENCE DIAGRAMMING SKILLS ARE NOT EXCELLENT.
(Ananarchivist said, before realizing they forgot a period on one of the sentences and generally screwed up all the punctuation.)
Let’s have a test for any new law. Whomever introduces a law must be able to read and understand the legislation they have introduced and be able to explain it in clear terms.
Sure it is.
Exactly! I was reading the comments and looked back up at the sentence, and suddenly it was plain as day. Weird. Now I can’t see it the way I did at first. Granted, it’s neither a great sentence or a great headline, but maybe that was the point? “Courts must use diagrams of tortured sentence structures in order to rule”, possibly? I think it was the use of diagram as a verb that threw me, as a previous commenter noted.
It’s easy to say that laws are overly wordy and use tortured sentence structure on purpose, and I’m sure some do, particularly corporate or politicized laws. But if you have ever had to write an important rule that people are force to follow, you’ll quickly realize that language itself is part of the problem. Or maybe “the interpretation of language is the problem” is more accurate. Add what you think is a simple, straight forward, clause to a union contract, one that you crafted to give both parties what you agreed on, and the jailhouse lawyer you work with will find its linguistic weakness. I wish I could get the one or two that spend hours thinking about how to leverage every word to their benefit (no matter how unintended) to work on the negotiating team. Thus we have the spirit of the law vs the letter of the law.
If Cory has used this headline we’d be on post 200 of the argument about whether he substantively misled us because the case only refers to a single court making the diagram, not of courts doing so. And it is true that they “must” do so? Or is it merely a convenience?
I didn’t have any trouble reading this headline. Then again, I also didn’t have any trouble reading the statute.
The adult in me:
Yes, you are right, my headline was poor in other ways, probably worse factually than his.
But then:
fine then:
Wow, good for you. I’ll alert the media. I forgot for a second that even the most casual and self deprecating comments will fall to the circling pedants. Or maybe I’ve misunderstood your sentence.
Well, it is fixed now. It made no sense originally.
Or rather. the bbs version is, the BB version is still weird…
Is been edited. It was bad.
Oh, yes, I see what you mean. I was looking at the bbs headline when I made that comment. Looks like the BB headline is still pretty confusing.
Enh, it’s probably a fair cop. I was saying that I didn’t find the headline confusing (though now I’m not even sure what the original headline was or if I ever even saw it based on comments below) but that I sit around and read laws for a not-insignificant part of my working life so maybe I’m the wrong person to judge readability of sentences since I am so used to obtuse nonsense. Maybe that was just bragging about what a great reader I am, I’m not sure.
Really, the only reason I wanted to chime in was to make light fun of the headline police that show up on many of Cory’s posts. Probably too inside-baseball. Odds are I should have just thought twice and shut up.
I’d extend it to those who vote on it. If they get to vote for/against, they should be able to pass a test of their understanding what they are voting on. And reading it all. That itself could make the laws simpler and shorter.
I’d let anyone vote against any law they do not understand. That way, difficult to follow lawyerese would be punished by failing to pass the dunderheaded congress.
Here are the two versions of the headline–one in the feed, the other in the BBS. One makes sense, the other doesn’t.
Feed: “Court has to a law’s diagram tortured sentence structure in order to rule”
BBS: “Court has to diagram a law’s tortured sentence structure in order to rule”
Nobody’s going crazy. It’s just that BoingBoing for some reason apparently doesn’t draw the two headlines from the same source.
I propose an even simpler rule:
Present the law as written to a random sample of registered voters for whom English is their primary language. If fewer than three-fifths of the sample can parse the meaning of the law, the authors of the law are executed.
I think one of the conclusions we can make from reading Cory’s headlines is that this blogging thing doesn’t pay enough to merit proof reading. On to the next topic!
I fixed it. It kept making me mentally stumble. Like missing the last step down a flight of stairs. Couldn’t handle it.
Sorry to have ruined the fun.
It originally was “Court has to a law’s diagram tortured sentence structure in order to rule”
