法律文书为何如此令人生厌 | 经济学人科技

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2023-06-16 03:06

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Science & technology | The language of the law

科技 | 法律语言

英文部分选自经济学人20230603期科技板块

Science & technology | The language of the law

科技 | 法律语言

Why legal writing is so awful

法律文书为何如此令人生厌

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by mere convenience

别把本就能简单解释的概念归因于恶意

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable lines. You would struggle to find such a line in the writings of lawyers themselves—and not just because they would, presumably, disagree. Though some judges are sophisticated stylists, most legal language is fussy, tangled and incapable of producing anything so pithy. (This is no doubt one reason so many people want to kill all the lawyers.) But do lawyers write that way to impress, to bewilder—or perhaps because they must?

“我们上来就得干掉所有律师”是莎翁最让人记忆深刻的台词之一。但律师们自己却写不出这样直白准确的语句，当然不完全因为他们不愿意这么写。虽然有些法官文字功底深厚，但大多数法律语言却用词繁琐、结构复杂，写不出言简意赅的句子（无疑这也是那么多人想干掉所有律师的其中一个原因）。然而，律师们的行文方式是为了夺眼球，还是虚张声势，还是他们可能就得这么写？

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Eric Martínez and his colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Edinburgh tried to find out. Contracts written in “legalese”, as well as simplified versions conveying identical concepts, were shown to American lawyers and laypeople. It turns out that lawyers struggle with, and dislike, legal language almost as much as their clients.

埃里克·马丁内斯（Eric Martínez）与麻省理工学院和爱丁堡大学的研究团队对这一问题展开了研究，并发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》（Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences）上。马丁内斯和团队将用“法言法语”书写的合同和表达相同概念的白话版合同展示给美国的律师和非法律人士。结果发现，律师们几乎和他们的委托人一样认为“法律语言”读起来费劲且不讨喜。

Legalese is heavy on “centre-embedding”, sentences in which related words are separated by a long insertion, as in “It is understood by artist and company that comprehensive liability insurance, protecting against any claim or demand up to $300,000, including attorney’s fees, related to company’s actions under this venue agreement, shall be purchased and maintained throughout the agreement by company.” This puts a heavy strain on the brain’s working memory. The word “insurance” must be held in the mind while some 20 other words go by before its attendant verb phrase “shall be purchased” arrives.

法律文书大量使用“中心嵌入”的句式结构，把相关词分开，嵌入上很长的插入语，例如：“对于艺术家和公司来说，综合责任保险，涵盖三十万美元以内与本场地协议项下公司行为相关的索赔或要求以及律师费，应由公司在整个协议期间购买并续保”。整段话对大脑的工作记忆带来极大负担。“保险”这个词须牢记在心，因为在其动词“购买”之前约有40多个字飘过。

Another baleful feature of legal writing is jargon: uncommon words like hereinbefore, mala fides and lessor. These mean little more than above, bad faith and landlord. Even if most lawyers and many laypeople know the jargon, the words require more effort to recall than everyday ones.

法律文书的另一大诟病在于术语的使用。比如，“hereinbefore”、“mala fides”和“lessor”这些提法很少见，但意思很简单，就是“above”（以上）、“bad faith”（恶意）和“landlord”（业主）。即便绝大多数律师和很多非法律界人士都认识这些术语，但联想这些词的意思仍比日常用语要费劲。

Given the almost universal disdain for legal language, the obvious question is why it persists. Mr Martínez and his colleagues examined several hypotheses. One was “the curse of knowledge”. This is the idea that many learned people do not know how to write for those less informed than themselves. But the researchers found that the lawyers struggle with legal language too. They found the content of the legalese contracts harder to understand and remember. So did laypeople, of course, but they remembered the simple contracts as well as the lawyers did the complex ones; they understood them almost as well, too.

既然大家都普遍厌恶法律语言，那为什么这些术语仍在使用？马丁内斯和团队对一些假说展开了研究。其中之一便是“知识惹的祸”。这一说法认为很多文化人不知道该如何为那些没自己有文化的人写作。但研究人员发现，律师读法律语言也费劲。用法律术语写的合同内容往往更难懂、更难记。看“法言法语”写的合同对于非法律人士来说很难，但若是白话版本，他们能记住的内容，和律师看法律术语版记住的内容差不多，而从理解程度上，外行人几乎和律师一样。

备注：

知识诅咒（curse of knowledge），指的是一旦我们自己知道某样东西，就会发现很难想象不知道的时候会是什么样子。我们的知识诅咒了我们，对于我们自己来说，同别人分享我们的知识变得很难，因为我们不易重造我们听众的心境。

https://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/%E7%9F%A5%E8%AF%86%E8%AF%85%E5%92%92

A more cynical idea was the “it’s just business” hypothesis. This holds that lawyers are intentionally opaque so as to gull clients into paying more for their supposed expertise. But that did not fit the data either, for the lawyers believed their clients would be more likely to sign the simplified contracts than the standard ones.

另一种更为愤世嫉俗的观点是“（使用法律术语写作）只是为了赚钱论”。该观点认为律师使用晦涩的措辞是有意为之，旨在哄骗客户为其“专业水准”多掏腰包。然而，这一观点同样与数据不符，因为参与研究的律师表示，比起文字晦涩难懂的标准合同，客户更倾向于在语言简明的合同上签字。

备注：When someone uses the phrase “It’s just business”, they mean to say that the decision or action they’re taking is done rationally with business interests in mind. A longer version of the phrase is: Nothing personal, just business. The meaning is clear. The decision or action is financially motivated.

Perhaps legalese is a form of “in-group signalling”—behaviour used to signal belonging to a group, such as religious iconography or flag-waving at sports events, and aimed at fellow lawyers rather than clients? But the lawyers in the test group said they would be more likely to hire the writers of the simplified contracts than the authors of the traditional gobbledygook.

也许法律语言是一种“内部群体信号”，即为表明归属于某群体所采取的特定行为，例如宗教图腾或是在体育赛事上摇旗助威，该行为主要针对的是律师同行而非客户（或许是这样的吧）。但是测试组里的律师表示他们也更倾向于雇佣那些起草简明法律合同的律师，而非起草艰深晦涩文书的律师。

The most common defence of legalese is the need for precision, says Mr Martínez (who trained as a lawyer before switching to cognitive science). Legal language, in this view, is too important to leave to the imprecisions of ordinary style. But this argument was refuted too: the lawyers who read the simplified contracts rated them just as enforceable as the complex ones.

马丁内斯表示，法律语言合理性的最常见论据就是这是出于精确性的需要。马丁内斯是法律科班出身，之后转向研究认知科学。在他看来，法律语言十分重要，因此不能够像日常用语一样不严谨，但这一论点也遭到了反驳：阅读了用简明语言起草法律合同的律师表示，与艰深晦涩的合同相比，这些法律合同执行效力一样高。

The researchers were left with a simple conclusion, which they call the “copy-and-paste hypothesis”. Lawyers imitate what previous lawyers have done. After all, a good deal of rote legal work (such as drawing up contracts) can be copied in large chunks from one document to another.

因此，研究人员得出了一个简单结论，即“复制粘贴式假说”。律师会模仿前辈们的做法，毕竟有大量的法律工作是格式化的（比如起草合同），可以大段地从之前的文件进行复制粘贴。

Whatever the reason, changing behaviour will be hard. Experts in legal writing have called for clearer prose for decades. But the plague of legalese persists. Perhaps evidence from outside the profession will help change things—especially if it is written in plain language.

不管真实原因如何，改变这一做法很难。数十年来，法律文书写作专家一直在呼吁使用更加清晰的语言，但法律用语艰深晦涩的现象却始终存在。也许法律行业外的案例，尤其是使用简明语言写作的案例，会改变这一现状。

翻译组：

Jack Jan，实践出真知

Colin，男，崇拜科比的一枚小翻译

Alfredo，清纯男高体验卡仅剩几个月到期

校对组：

YY，愿逆风如解意，容易莫摧残

Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译

观点|评论|思考

本周感想

雪迪，开眼看世界

考虑受众的接受水平是绝大部分工作的准则。受众的理解是作品实现目的的前提。比如讲笑话、讲课，受众听不懂，就只能“曲高和寡”。

法律语言受众极广，人人都需要先懂法再才能守法，因此法律语言的简单明了更为重要。

但法律语言有时令人望而生畏，不下点功夫查资料没办法弄明白法律语言的实际含义。除了文中提到的句式复杂和术语，可能还有一个原因：目前法律语言中有许多概念翻译自外语词汇。比如“意思表示（an expression of intent）”，已经是最符合原意的中文表达，但似乎看外语原文更容易理解一些。

法律语言的使用者包括许多文化程度不高的人，所以法律语言进一步简化，才能让人们拿起法律武器保护自己时少一些障碍。

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