Legal ramblings and such

[fallabout]

Law opinion submitted with 2 minutes to spare -- I am a beautiful, beautiful man.

Writing for law is pretty much the polar opposite of my natural style. On the first day of LRW, the tutor said, "I will penalise you for flowery prose. I will penalise you for sentences of more than twenty words. I will penalise you for failing to state the obvious. I

Comments

[emeraldbijou]

Wow. I gotta tell you, Hansel, your chosen subject could hypnotise chickens at a hundred yards.

It's a bit sad to think of the signature panache of your syntax being chained and chastised. An interesting exercise in style, though.

I can't say I've ever heard of Lintz, though just up the road we do have a town called Pity Me. It rather deserves the appellation.

[fallabout]

Both Lintz and Pity Me sound like something straight out of Terry Pratchett. The more I learn about reality, the less the Discworld seems bizarre.

Is Pity Me its actual official name?

[the_raving_scot]

I like that attempted politeness is reason enough to dismiss a case.
Speaking of those who took it upon themselves to write the law, I'm currently reading about General MacArthur and the American Occupation. John Dower (the author of the book in question) has some excellent line about him blurring the line between supreme commander and supreme being that I'll have to post later.

[fallabout]

My favourite aspect of law-writing in the American Occupation is the fact that the ex-ASIJer who drafted the English version of the Japanese constitution included all sorts of women's rights (paid maternity leave, freedom from sexual harassment, etc.) that were quietly edited out by the translation team when the Japanese version was being prepared.

What's your Loathing name?

[the_raving_scot]

I don't think everything was edited out, though. After the Japanese translated the Allied document and made their changes to it, the Allies had a chance to re-translate it and "fix" most of the Japanese alterations. To my knowledge the Japanese constitution remains to date the most liberal document of its kind.

It wasn't just that woman, either. Apparently several Japanese were quite keen on gender equality- some legislator submitted a workers' rights bill that, among other things, permitted menstrual leave for women.