Speaking Tongues

I recently encountered a court record which some would possibly mistake as coming from a Greek or Latin court rather than from an American Tribunal.

I showed the file to Paul and he merely smirked at it, saying that the judge who wrote it probably didn’t even understand the foreign jargon that he littered in his decision. I teased him a bit by saying that he probably lambasted the judge because he had a hard time deciphering or translating the Greek or Latin terms. Paul is the department’s self-proclaimed “foreign language expert.”

I’m glad that I don’t often encounter court records that are replete with Latin phrases or maxims. They may give a decision a semblance of scholarliness, but it also needlessly complicates the record. Contrary to popular perception, many court record readers are non-lawyers. It is therefore imperative that judicial decisions should be crafted in such a way that laymen would be able to understand it without constant reference to dictionaries.