Comments on: I confess: I’m complicit in a corrupt and dishonest system.

By: pfriedman

pfriedman — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:46:20 +0000

Obviously I myself am sorely lacking in the ability to write most of the time, including in the preceding comment, with precision and clarity.

By: pfriedman

pfriedman — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:45:07 +0000

I spoke imprecisely in slamming Bush and Palin (and large numbers of other politicians): I do at least expect some minimal level of an ability to communicate in English from our governmental executives. Those 2 seem to be just to particularly egregious and recent examples of an inability to communicate with sufficient clarity and precision to make clear to the average citizen exactly what they mean. That those 2 are not particularly articulate on legal matters is, as Brian writes, nothing to get too worked up about. Neither is a lawyer, and legal writing is an area of expertise.

By: Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity » Blog Archive » Language abuse is posing an existential threat to those around me.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:30:27 +0000

[...] Perhaps it’s being reminded recently to re-read “Politics and the English Language.” Perhaps it’s the daily abuse of our language I read and hear in journalism. Perhaps it’s the particular despair inherent in mid-November of the first semester of law school, when students have realized they have learned a lot and understandably, given the enormous effort they’ve made over the last three months to accomplish that learning, let up, forgetting what I’ve been telling them for those three months: it will be many, many years before they feel in their guts they’re really good at expressing themselves as lawyers and understanding other lawyers. Perhaps it’s the letter a friend received from her mortgage lender making a sincere and pathetic effort to explain to a human being what it could do for her under the federal government’s recent “baiiout” plan. Perhaps it’s reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent best-selling insight: it takes 10,000 hours of practice for anyone to become really good at anything and realizing that maybe it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a really good legal writer. Perhaps it’s realizing again, for the thousandth time, that lawyers really do often use their skill with language to obscure and deceive. [...]

By: Brian L.

Brian L. — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:30:53 +0000

Harumph: For the record, the heads of executive branches nationwide aren’t _expected_ to practice (and therefore, “understand”) the law. That’s why we’ve got Attorneys General, is it not? And, besides that post, the myriad of other advisors and assistants whose entire jobs it is to “advise” the executive of the law.

Now, if you were to tell me that our various supreme court justices throughout the country didn’t understand the law, I’d be right there with ya… but the Executive serves a different purpose, so to me, it’s more forgivable.

Aside from all that, who *really* wants to hear the President come on national television and declare that, “Subject to the terms and conditions contained within my speech of the 12th Instant; reviewed, clarified, and affirmed by the Courts of the 4th Circuit, my position on the issue of polar bear migration is such that they should be allowed, under the conditions outlined for them by the penumbral rights listed in the context of the 12th Amendment, to move to lands unprotected by the Oklahoma Treaties of 1854.”

I know I don’t. I’d much rather hear the plain talk of a non-lawyer from my executives.

Anyway, sorry to pick nits. Your observations on patent law are *spot* on, but why not blame the Machine (i.e., the giant, unaccountable Bureaucracy) instead of the 4- to 8-year attendant?

Respectfully yours,
Brian