Author Topic: Retrospective: Dealing with questionable or downright wrong legalese  (Read 4800 times)

Joe Carillo

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“Proofreading questionable or downright wrong legalese – I”
(1st of a 3-part series)

I received a well-meaning, constructive letter recently from a Supreme Court staffer asking if he could consult me once in a while when he’s in doubt about his work. Part of his job is to proofread court decisions and resolutions drafted by a ponente or the designated writer from among the justices.

The letter-writer, whose name I won’t disclose for obvious reasons, says he’s neither a lawyer nor an English major, so his proofreading is confined to just typos and grammar. “I used to be very strict,” he says. “I’d correct ‘back wages’ or ‘in so far’ into one word, and put a comma or period where I think it’s needed. This is because my idea of proofreading is that it’s for publication purposes; when the document gets printed, you can no longer correct it.”

PHILIPPINE SUPREME COURT IN SESSION, 2016


He cited two very arresting examples (all italicizations mine): “Once, I came across the phrase ‘without authority so to do’ in a quoted Rule of Court. My immediate impulse was to correct it to ‘without authority to do so’ but when I checked with the Rules of Court, I found that it’s how it is written in Rule 27. In another instance, the decision in Diamonon v. DOLE has this phrase, ‘to serve the interests of a justice.’ The ‘a’ is certainly not needed there but you can’t change it because it’s as good as law. This is a very good example of how even the article ‘a’ can change meaning if used improperly.”

My comment: I checked those dubious usages and found that “so to do” and an even more curious variant, “to so do,” have precedents in British English and in American jurisprudence. Here’s a “so to do” usage by the University of Oxford: “The Green College Development Office will only issue information about Old Members when those Old Members give written permission so to do.” And here’s a “to so do” usage by a law of the State of Arizona: “Intentionally intercepts the deliberations of a jury or aids, authorizes, employs, procures or permits another to so do.” No matter how awful-sounding then, let’s allow both usages to pass unchallenged.

But as to the extraneous “a” in the Diamonon v. DOLE decision, it’s a very serious proofreading error that gives a derogatory sense to an appellate court’s broad discretionary powers in considering matters not assigned as errors on appeal, in effect allowing it to arrive “at a just decision and complete resolution of the case or to serve the interests of a justice or to avoid dispensing piecemeal justice.” The mere thought of a justice making a decision for his or her self-interest is too subversive to contemplate, so even if that offending “a” now forms part of the Rules of Court, it ought to be knocked off in the interest of justice, semantics, and good sense.

The letter-writer continues: “I began to be more lax when I noticed resentment in my being strict as evidenced by my simple corrections not being implemented, especially when it comes to subject-predicate agreement. This may just be a feeling, but it’s possible that because of their higher educational attainment, lawyers feel bad about being corrected by a nonlawyer.

“To illustrate, when I changed the verb ‘were’ to ‘was’ in the phrase ‘the alluded delay in the completion of the subject project were traceable to…,’ the correction was returned to me marked by an ‘x’ and with ‘the series’ added to ‘traceable’ to justify the use of the verb ‘were.’ (Your opinion, please.) So I just confine myself now to correcting very obvious mistakes, such as ‘the property can only be assessed through a narrow road’ (accessed), ‘hinge of doubt’ (tinge), and ‘the country’s national resources’ (natural).”  

We’ll take up more of his very instructive proofreading predicaments next week. (2015)

This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 21, 2015 issue © 2015 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2018, 11:52:42 PM by Joe Carillo »

Joe Carillo

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Re: How to proofread questionable or downright wrong legalese - I
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2015, 08:47:08 AM »
2 Responses to "How to proofread questionable or downright wrong legalese (1)" in the Internet edition of The Manila Times:

1. zzyggy says:
March 21, 2015 at 10:20 am

Nice! I like this article. It’s the Supreme Court he’s working for. May I call those “infallible inadvertent errors” as loopholes?

My Reply
March 21, 2015 at 2:24 pm

Thanks for the compliment, zzyggy! As for those two particular glitches in the Supreme Court’s legalese, I think the term “loopholes” wouldn’t be spot-on, for it means “ambiguities or omissions in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded.” It’s clear that neither the missing “a” nor the subject-verb disagreement arising from misuse of the plural “were” is a legally or logically defensible ground for such evasion, so the more innocuous term “semantic wormholes”–my own coinage–might be more appropriate.

2. Cres Malifier says:
March 21, 2015 at 6:47 am

The Supreme Court should have continuing-education classes in correct standard English for all employees of he judiciary including language-handicapped judges and justices. Compared to Singaporeans and Hong Kong magistrates nakakahiya tayo!