It’s Not You: MIT Investigated Why Laws Are Written in Ways We Don’t Understand

Yes, read the laws contracts or legal documents is difficult for you, you are not alone! In fact, ordinary people know very little about this kind of dialect used by lawyers and those who are responsible for drafting laws, because Apparently, they are made with this goal in mind: that we do not understand them all.

And yes, for many, reading this type of format may seem like it is in another language. That is why the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology He wanted to understand if there was an implicit reason behind these tangled sentences and paragraphs.

Thanks to a study, published in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Researchers have found that even non-lawyers use this type of “complex language” when asked to write laws.

But, Why are laws, which by their spirit should be friendly and understood by all, written in this way?

This is what MIT research has discovered.

As explained in the MIT study, It has become common for those who write laws to display this writing behavior in an intricate manner “to indicate their power.”

The study’s lead author, Edward Gibson, a brain and cognitive scientist at MIT explained that “People seem to understand that there is an unwritten rule that laws should look like this, and they write them that way.”

In this sense, after analyzing several legal documents, the researchers found that One element that makes legal writing difficult to read and process is the insertion of long definitions in the middle of sentences – called central embedding – which is very rare in everyday language.

This is why the level of understanding is difficult for an ordinary person.

In a previous study, Gibson had already analyzed legal contracts totaling 3.5 million words and, after comparing them with other writings, such as film scripts, newspaper articles and academic papers, he found that the language used was significantly more difficult to understand.

“In a way, legal language has developed this tendency to place structures within structures, in a way that is not typical of human languages.” assured the author.

To retest their hypothesis about the difficulties of understanding legal language, Gibson and his MIT colleagues They asked 200 “non-lawyers” to write laws prohibiting crimes and to create stories about those crimes.

The surprise was great when Participants submitted their written materials and the researchers found that they repeatedly used the core integrations, whether they drafted the law in one go or in several stages.

Nevertheless, When writing stories about crimes, people used simpler, more user-friendly language.

In a second exercise, The researchers asked people to rewrite certain laws and then explain them to supposed foreign visitors.

The result? Again, The “non-lawyers” wrote laws that were very complex to understand, but in their explanations the language was much simpler and easier to understand.

Additionally, in another earlier study from 2023, scientists found that This legal language can even be uncomfortable and difficult to understand for lawyers themselves: As the authors explain, these professionals preferred to have versions of the laws in “plain language” documents and assured that these alternatives were as “enforceable” as traditional documents.

“Lawyers also find legal language cumbersome and complicated.” said Gibson. “Lawyers don’t like it, laypeople don’t like it, so the goal of this work was to try to understand why they write documents this way.”

To better understand this phenomenon, Gibson’s lab investigates origins of ‘central encrustation’ which is currently used in laws and makes it difficult for others to understand: they even date back to the oldest set of laws known to history, which dates back to around 1750 BC. c.

“Perhaps there was a stylistic way of writing at the time, and if it was considered successful, people would use that style in other languages. I suppose it is an accidental property of the way laws were first written, but we don’t know yet. ” said the researcher.

At least in American history, in the 1970s, former President Richard Nixon said that federal regulations should be written in “simpler terms” so they could be more easily understood. However, Gibson insisted that the legal language has changed very little.

“We recently learned what makes legal language so complicated, and That’s why I’m optimistic that it can be changed.

Laws are important: Whether in a condominium community, at work, at university and, on a larger scale, in the countryside, it is essential that everyone can access and also understand them.

The study becomes relevant after detecting the element that could make its writing and understanding more complex. because it could suggest to officials and authorities that there are alternatives to writing these texts, without sacrificing the power that one wants to transmit with them.