Common Law And Legalese

Common Law is the body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals. Common Law arises as a precedent. A Common Law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is generally bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision, a principle known as stare decisis. Common Law, as the body of law made by judges, stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process.

Legalese is a pejorative term associated with a traditional style of legal writing that "lay readers cannot readily comprehend." Legalese describes poor legal writing that is cluttered, wordy, indirect, and includes unnecessary technical words or phrases. Legalese is language a lawyer might use in drafting a contract or a pleading but would not use in ordinary conversation. The traditional style of legal writing has been labeled reader-unfriendly. Whatever lawyers write must be Clear, Correct, Concise, and Complete." These characteristics of good legal writing style are recognized in the United States. My publisher could not sell the book I wrote on drafting, pleading and conveyancing in the early nineties.