Friday, January 28, 2011

Constitutional right to dissent or Why I hate lawyers


I respectfully inform you that it is my constitutional right to dissent with the agreement that has been reached upon by the general assembly.

Translation?

I don't agree.

Why the hell do lawyers and judges complicate sentences and words to the point of writing half a page that doesn't mean anything?? First of all, as my "beloved" Waves teacher from CEGEP used to say "Think of the trees!!!" (though I don't care much about the trees, but I just had to plug that in). Second of all (and the main point), what is the point of communicating something if no one (except your own breed of language twisters) can understand a word you're saying? You literally need a law degree just to translate their gibberish into common mortal language. And maybe you think I'm exaggerating, but let me give you an example (yeah the introductory sentence was just me trying and failing miserably to imitate my law teacher). It's a long quote, but bear with me.

"The conventional approach of categorizing discrimination as “direct” or
'adverse effect' discrimination should be replaced by a unified approach for several
reasons. First, the distinction between a standard that is discriminatory on its face and
a neutral standard that is discriminatory in its effect is difficult to justify: few cases can
be so neatly characterized. Second, it is disconcerting that different remedies are
available depending on the stream into which a malleable initial inquiry shunts the
analysis."

And this actually goes on for over half a page. And do you know what it means? Basically there are 2 types of discrimination, but we don't care about them because the judges have decided that it's not important to make a distinction. Two lines! Vs Half a page!! And that's not even the worst part. Just look at the last sentence of the quote. What does it mean?? I have no freakin' clue!! And I don't need to!! Cause it doesn't change anything!!! And these are sentences from the Supreme Court (therefore not that relevant to you and I). But the Civil Code or contracts or the gazillion other Acts that they have and which relate to us for the simple reason that we live in society and we are bound by regulations... Gah, I get a headache after reading just one page. Strangely enough, even my book on quantum mechanics is easier to understand than this.

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