FuzzyLaw: Collection of lay citizens’ understandings of legal terminology

The Cardiff University Centre for Language and Communication has made available FuzzyLaw, an online collection of “lay-people’s explanations of legal terms.”

Here is the description from the project’s Website:

FuzzyLaw has gathered explanations of legal terms from members of the public in order to get a sense of what the ‘person on the street’ has in mind when they think of a legal term. By making lay-people’s explanations of legal terms available to interpreters, police and other legal professionals, we hope to stimulate debate and learning about word meaning, public understanding of law and the nature of explanation.

The explanations gathered in FuzzyLaw are unusual in that they are provided by members of the public. These people, all aged over 18, regard themselves as ‘native speakers’, ‘first language speakers’ and ‘mother tongue’ speakers of English and have lived in England and/or Wales for 10 years or more. We might therefore expect that they will understand English legal terminology as well as any member of the public might. No one who has contributed has ever worked in the criminal law system or as an interpreter or translator. They therefore bring no special expertise to the task of explanation, beyond whatever their daily life has provided.

We have gathered explanations for 37 words in total. You can see a sample of these explanations on FuzzyLaw. The sample of explanations is regularly updated. You can also read responses to the terms and the explanations from mainly interpreters, police officers and academics. You are warmly invited to add your own responses and join in the discussion of each and every word. Check back regularly to see how discussions develop and consider bookmarking the site for future visits. The site also contains commentaries on interesting phenomena which have emerged through the site. You can respond to the commentaries too on that page, contributing to the developing research project.

FuzzyLaw is based in Cardiff, Wales, and explores English words as they are used in the criminal legal system of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The examples and discussions that you will find here are, however, also relevant to languages other than English, legal jurisdictions around the world, and legal settings beyond only criminal law. This is because these examples and discussions concern meaning and explore words in a variety of contexts of use in the law. [...]

For more details please see the FuzzyLaw Website.

HT @SquareLaw

Nyman-Metcalf and Täks : Simplifying the law: Can ICT help us?

Professor Katrin Nyman-Metcalf and Ermo Täks, both of Tallinn University of Technology, have published Simplifying the law—can ICT help us? forthcoming in International Journal of Law and Information Technology.

Here is the abstract:

The article analyses how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can assist in simplifying law, by visualizing it and structuring it. It describes current research as well as activities by the European Union to make law more accessible by using ICT. The authors offers a new method for visualization of law for its better systematization and use, based on the legal language and its components.

Legal Informatics and Legal Communication Papers at ICLS 2012

Several papers on legal informatics or legal communication were presented at ICLS 2012: International Conference on Law and Society, held 5-8 June 2012 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Below are the titles, and links to abstracts, of the legal informatics or legal communication papers — that I’ve been able to identify — that were presented at the conference. If you know of others, please feel free to identify them in the comments.

• Philip Adey (University of Sydney): Expert Psychiatric Evidence in Civil Litigation Involving Allegations of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Australian Experience
• Afra Afsharipour (University of California, Davis): Deal Technology
• Seantel A. Anais (Carleton University): Commissioning Credibility: Texts, Testimony, and Truth in Commissions of Inquiry
• Maria Ines Bergoglio (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba): Legitimacy of the Judicial System and Lay Participation in Judicial Decision-Making Processes in Córdoba, Argentina
• Susan Berk-Seligson and Mitchell A. Seligson (Vanderbilt University): The Role of the Police in Crime-Prevention in Central America
• Susan L. Brooks (Drexel University) and David M. Boulding (Private Practice): Using Communication Models to Teach Relational Competencies in Law School
• Christopher Brown (University of Arkansas, Monticello): Death by Any Other Name: Definitionalism’s Impact on America’s Response to Genocide
• Iokepa Casumbal-Salazar (University of Hawaii, Manoa): Monumental Science in Hawaiʻi: U.S. Imperialism, Western Astronomy, and Kanaka Maoli Resistance to Telescopes atop Mauna a Wākea
• Marie Comiskey (University of Michigan): Testing the Comprehensibility of Canadian Jury Instructions and the Efficacy of 3 Comprehension Aids
• Shari S. Diamond, Chair (Northwestern U/American Bar Foundation); Participants: Mei-Tong Chen (Judicial Yuan, Taiwan), Edmundo S. Hendler (University of Buenos Aires), Jae-Hyup Lee (Seoul National University), Richard O. Lempert (University of Michigan), Kwangbai Park (Chungbuk National University), Christoph Rennig (Frankfurt High Court of Appeals): Roundtable–The Role of Professionals in Lay Tribunals
• Soren Frederiksen (York University): Has the Supreme Court’s Philosophy of Science Made It to Canada?
• Masahiro Fujita (Kansai University): Informational Justice in Jury Research: Reframing Prior Jury Researches
• Jeremy Gans (University of Melbourne): Verbal Equivalents to Likelihood Ratios: Limited Probative Value, Strong Prejudicial Effect, Inconclusive Admissibility, Immoderate Usage
• Claire M Germain (University of Florida): Recent Developments in the French Criminal Jury
• Toby S Goldbach (Cornell University): Lay Participation in the Criminal Trial: First Nations Sentencing Circles and Law Reform in Canada
• Jasmine B. Gonzales Rose (University of Pittsburgh): Juror Language Accommodation in Theory and Praxis
• Mel Greenlee (California Appellate Project): Faretta, Marsden, and the Pro-Se Motion: Legal Language on the Skids
• Miranda C. Hallett (Otterbein University) and Michael Jones-Correa (Cornell University): Borders of the Public: Framing the Inclusion and Exclusion of Undocumented Migrants
• Paula Hannaford-Agor (National Center for State Courts), Nicole L. Waters (National Center for State Courts): Juror and Jury Use of New Media: A Baseline Exploration
• Valerie P. Hans (Cornell University): The Jury in Russia: Research and Reform
• Emma M. Henderson (La Trobe University): The Empty Gesture: Jury Directions and the Meaning of Consent in Rape Trials in Victoria, Australia
• Livia Holden (Lahore University of Management Sciences): Non-State Law and Governance in South Asia: Changing Discourse
• Ruth Horowitz (New York University): Experts and Deliberative Democracy
• Syugo Hotta (Meiji University): Linguistic Justice: A Linguistic Analysis of Deliberation
• Takayuki Ii (Hirosaki University): A Gap Before and After Saiban-in Service
• John D Jackson (University College, Dublin) and Nikolai Kovalev (Wilfrid Laurier University): Lay Adjudication in Europe: New Developments
• Natália P Junior (IESP / UERJ): Participatory and Deliberative Democracy from Local to Global: The Example of Women’s Conferences as New Spaces for Mobilization and Proposed Public Policies on Gender in Brazil
• Shiro Kashimura (Kobe University): Telling a Code of Law: Interactive Grounds and Contingencies of Giving Legal Advice in Japan
• Zeynep U. Kasli (University of Washington, Seattle): Who Frames the Rights-Talk and how? Immigrant Associations and Undocumented Immigrants
• Richard Kemp and Kristy Martire (University of New South Wales): A Framework for Testing the Validity of Forensic Science Evidence
• Yumiko Kita (University of Sussex): Intentions and the Reality of the Lay Adjudication in Criminal Trials: Indications from the Introduction of the Japanese Citizen Judge System (Saiban-in Seido) in Terms of a Comparative Criminal Justice Study
• Takanori Kitamura (Tokai University): An Interactional Analysis of Legal Consultations between Lawyers and Clients in Japan
• Danfeng S.V. Koon (University of California, Berkeley): Metaphors and Meaning: The Role of Metaphors in Shaping Organizational Responses to Law
• Janny Leung (University of Hong Kong): The Judge as a Godfather, Scholar, Educator, and Scolding Parent: Judicial Discourse in Cantonese Courtrooms in Hong Kong
• Sean Mallin (University of California, Irvine): Finding Blight: Code Enforcement and “Responsible” Ownership in Post-Katrina New Orleans
• Kristy Martire, Richard Kemp, Ben R. Newell, and Ian Watkins (University of New South Wales): The Correspondence between Expert Intentions and Juror Interpretations: A Likely Story?
• Lisa McElroy (Drexel University): Cameras at the Supreme Court: A Rhetorical Analysis
• Giorgi Meladze (Free University of Tbilisi): Georgian Jury System
• Caren Morrison (Georgia State University): Jurors Under Scrutiny: The Rise of Online Intrusion
• Lisa Mortimer (University of Melbourne): Access to Justice in Timor-Leste: The Role of Local and Non-Local Languages in Timor-Leste’s Formal and Informal Justice Systems
• Margaret van Naerssen (Immaculata University): Miranda Rights: Selected Linguistic Correlates of “Knowingly” and “Intelligently”
• Evelyn Nava-Fischer (Cardiff University): The Role of Regulatory Framings in the Setting and Reception of Global Standards: The Discursive Constitution of International Standards Disputes and of Agri-Food Regulatory Models in India
• Takeshi Nishimura (Shimada & Nishimura Law Office): Transparency of Japanese Criminal Justice System after Saiban-in System Was Implemented
• Karen Petroski (Saint Louis University): Texts, Not Testimony: Rethinking the Legal Use of Non-Legal Expertise
• Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, Emma M Henderson, Kirsty Duncanson (La Trobe University) and Asher Flynn (Monash University): The Meanings of “Sex” and “Consent”: History, Discourse, and Impact of Rape Law Reform in Victoria (Australia)
• Richard Powell (Nihon University): Motivations For and Implications Of Changing the Language of the Law: Lessons from Malaysia
• Jeanne M. Powers (Arizona State University): Social Science Research and Judicial Decision Making in School Finance Litigation
• Ming Qi (Jilin University): The People’s Jurors in Chinese Judicial System: Mechanisms and Policies
• John N. Robinson (Northwestern University): Disputing Dispersal: Frames, Repertoires, and Support Structures in Anti-HOPE VI Legal Campaigns
• William Rose (Albion College): Occasional Legislators: Law, Politics, and the Discourse of Judging
• Meredith Rossner (University of Western Sydney): Common Narrative and Community Cohesion: Toward a Micro-Level Theory of Deliberative Dynamics
• Jenny Roth (Lakehead University) and Monica Flegel (Lakehead University): It’s Like Rape: Exploring Social Understandings of Copyright in Debates between Fans and Creative Producers
• Jessica Salerno (U of Illinois, Chicago/American Bar Foundation): Emotion and Jury Deliberation: Does Expressing Emotion Make Stereotyped Holdout Jurors More or Less Persuasive?
• Joseph Sanders (University of Houston): Milward v. Acuity Specialty Products Group: Constructing and Deconstructing Science in the Courtroom
• Tatsuya Sato (Ritsumeikan University): 3D Visualization System for Lay Judges to Understand Legal Disputes on Trial
• Michael J. Shapiro (University of Hawaii): War Crimes and the Justice Dispositif
• Brian G. Slocum (University of the Pacific): Linguistics and Authorial Intent
• Ciara Staunton (National University of Ireland, Galway): Ethics, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, and Democratic Deliberation
• David Tait (University of Western Sydney): Racial Coding of Railway Stations: Jury Deliberation about the Meaning of Place in a Mock Terrorism Trial
• Anthea Fay Vogl (University of Technology, Sydney): Telling Stories from Start to Finish: Exploring the Demand for Narrative in Refugee Testimony
• Kosuke Wakabayashi (Ritsumeikan University): The Effects of the Judicial Instruction which Includes Argument for Evidence Law Regarding Pre-Trial Publicity Information
• Natalie Wallace and Valerie P. Hans (Cornell University): Is There a Lawyer in the “House”? The Portrayal of Medical Negligence in “House, M.D.”
• Mark E. Walters (University of California, San Diego): Legal-Cultural Formations from High Literacy to Secondary Orality
• Zhuoyu Wang (Southwest University of Finance and Economics of China): An Empirical Research on China’s Recent Reforms of Its Mixed Tribunal System
• Matthew J. Wilson (University of Wyoming): Japan’s Evolving Lay Judge System: Room for Improvement or Even Expansion?
• Toru Yamada (Cornell University): A Conceptual Administrative Manual: Discursive Formations in Japan’s Heritage Nomination Process

Powell on Media Debate and Private Discourse on Language Policy in Malaysian Law

Professor Richard Powell of the Nihon University College of Economics presented a paper entitled Media Debate and Private Discourse on Language Policy in Malaysian Law, at ICA 2010: The International Communication Association Annual Conference, held 22-26 June 2010 in Singapore. Here is the abstract:

Public and private debate on language policy within Malaysian education has been vigorous ever since postcolonial administrators started attempting to strike a balance among the former official medium (English), the national language (Malay), and several languages used by larger ethnic communities (Mandarin, Tamil, Iban and others). Malaysian discourses have drawn attention from other countries addressing tensions between nationism and nationalism, and modification of policies put into place as recently as 2002 ensure that discussion remains robust and complex. In contrast, language policy in Malaysian law has attracted less attention, yet it should also be of wide interest, particularly in multilingual postcolonial societies seeking to make the legal system more transparent and accessible without undermining judicial impartiality or professional integrity.

Since the 1980s, Malay has officially been the medium of the Malaysian courts. However, English has retained a crucial role through legislative acknowledgement of its continued importance to ‘the interests of justice’. The present-day result is a bilingual legal system. While other Malaysian languages (such as Chinese and Tamil), like foreign languages, may be used only through translation, both Malay and English may be used in oral and written discourse. In general, Malay predominates in lower court and criminal cases and is required (except in extenuating circumstances) for all documents submitted to the court. English is more common in higher court and civil cases and in private and commercial law, where advocates frequently rely on English versions of documents and case-law authorities that are available only in that language. Professional training involves both languages and it is virtually impossible for anyone to qualify as a lawyer today without reasonable bilingual competence.

Media debate concerning the language of the law was most vigorous in the 1980s when the shift from English toward Malay was first implemented, but it continues to crop up in the print and electronic media. Typically this takes the form of a flurry of discussion about perceived inadequate Malay/English skills among older/younger lawyers, and in many ways this parallels discourse about the respective value of the two languages in Malaysian education. Sometimes there is deeper and more abstract discussion about the role and future of the current bilingualism in the legal domain. Is it a transitional phase until the national language attains ascendancy throughout the domain? Or is it a long-term pragmatic compromise enabling simpler cases to be heard in the language known best by the majority of the population while more complex cases are argued in the medium in which most of the common law has evolved over the centuries?

This paper offers a diachronic analysis of media, and to a lesser extent, academic, debate on law and language in Malaysia from the 1980s to the present day as discursive context to a set of interviews undertaken with 30 legal practitioners and educators that included questions about their choice of medium for specific professional tasks and their attitudes towards the rules on language imposed by the courts. As in the ongoing debate on the medium of instruction in education, the findings indicate a complex and nuanced range of opinions that defies simplistic associations between language preference and ethnic or socioeconomic background. While no new methodology is proposed that might authoritatively demonstrate causal links between social attitude and professional practice, it is strongly argued that neither a macrosociolinguistic nor a microsociolinguistic explanation alone is adequate for the multifunctional motivations that lie behind specific language choices: some attempt must be made to relate the one level of explanation to the other.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the author.

Thanks to Professor Powell for providing the abstract.

Azuelos-Atias On the Incoherence of Legal Language to the General Public

Dr. Sol Azuelos-Atias of the University of Haifa Department of Hebrew Language has published On the Incoherence of Legal Language to the General Public, forthcoming in International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. Here is the abstract:

I will suggest, in this article, a possible explanation of the fact that legal language appears incoherent to the general public. I will present one legal text (an indictment), explaining why it appears incoherent to legal laypersons. I will argue that the traits making this particular text appear incoherent are, first, that a specialized legal meaning is conveyed implicitly and, second, that there are no key-words that could direct laypersons to the knowledge making this meaning obvious to legalists. I will conclude that any legal text having these traits is likely to appear incoherent to the general public and suggest that the traits making my example appear incoherent might be rather common among the various texts of the various legal systems. On this suggestion there is no need to assume any causal relation between lawyers’ social interests and the apparent incoherence of legal language as it entails that this incoherence is inevitable. (I will argue that it is a result of the facts that legal language is ordinary language used, in the ordinary way, in the special context of the legal discourse.)

Robinson on Graphic and Symbolic Representation of Law: Lessons From Cross-Disciplinary Research

Peter Robinson of the Queensland Office of State Revenue has published Graphic and Symbolic Representation of Law: Lessons From Cross-Disciplinary Research, 16 eLaw Journal: Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law No. 1 (2009). Here is the abstract:

The cry for plain English is still heard, but not so loudly in recent times. In the 1980’s it was touted as the panacea for inscrutability in legislation and legal expression. In its wake, fundamental changes were made to the way that legislation and law were written and presented, and the fingerprints of those changes – finely structured and labeled provisions, preference for everyday, non-legalistic words, separate and generous dictionaries, bolded terms, etc. – are common in modern legislation and consumer contracts. Unfortunately, what is as common today as ever is the blank expression on the face of a student grappling with a rather elementary provision, or the more hostile look of a client who just ‘doesn’t get it’.

Similarly, graphic and pictorial formats have been promoted as promising solutions to the difficulties of understanding law, but again the results are less tangible. While it is common to see features like concept maps and flow charts within course materials and even legislation, in the educational arena any consequent improvement in legal problem-solving is elusive.

This article summarises the author’s research into the cognitive and linguistic reasons for common difficulties in comprehending law written in natural language, and the pros and cons of symbolic and graphical alternatives. It also documents some visual methods that have been implemented with some success in a modern organisational setting.

Nishime on Plessy v. Ferguson, the Tiger Woods Bill, and the Racial Order

Professor LeiLani Nishime of the University of Washington Department of Communication presented a paper entitled Plessy v. Ferguson, the Tiger Woods Bill, and the Racial Order, at RSA 2010: The 14th Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference, held 28-31 May 2010, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Here is the abstract:

Despite the one hundred and one year gap between Justice Harlan’s famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the congressional hearings on the Tiger Woods Bill (1997), both employ strangely similar approaches to defining the color line between black and white. Both arguments use colorblind language while invoking the figure of the Asian to normalize white advantage. This paper draws from both Critical Race Theory and Critical Rhetorical Theory to examine the rhetorical use of Asian Americans to create racial meaning and obscure racial hierarchies. It concludes by proposing an alternate language of race that, unlike Harlan’s dissent or the Tiger Woods Bill, takes advantage of the language of multiraciality to disrupt current racial thinking.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the author.

Thanks to Professor Nishime for providing the abstract.

Wheatcroft & Ellison on the Influence of Courtroom Questioning and Pre-Trial Preparation on Adult Witness Accuracy

Dr. Jacqueline Wheatcroft of the University of Liverpool School of Psychology Centre for Investigative Psychology and Dr. Louise Ellison of the University of Leeds School of Law have issued a preliminary report on the findings of their research on the influence of courtroom questioning and pre-trial preparation on the accuracy of courtroom testimony by adult witnesses.

The key research findings include:

• “The use of complex vocabulary and syntax during cross-examination was associated with reduced adult witness accuracy
• Prepared witnesses were significantly more likely than their unprepared counterparts to provide correct responses to cross-examination questions
• Prepared witnesses were additionally more likely to seek clarification during cross-examination
• Prepared witnesses were typically appreciative of the guidance they received prior to questioning”

This research was conducted from June 2009 through May 2010 under the name Exploring the influence of courtroom questioning and pre-trial preparation on eyewitness accuracy, and was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

An AHRC briefing report, entitled Exploring the Influence of Courtroom Questioning and Pre-Trial Preparation on Adult Witness Accuracy, describes the research methodology and the findings.

The AHRC briefing report describes the research topic as follows:

In England and Wales, witness familiarisation courses aim, inter alia, to acquaint witnesses with the standard questioning techniques employed by lawyers in the course of cross-examination and to provide witnesses with practical advice on how best to approach the interaction (Bond & Solon, 1999; Stockdale & Gresham, 1995). Despite a cautious view of witness familiarisation, the courts have endorsed this practice, approving the right of barristers to prepare witnesses for the experience of giving evidence (R v Momodou [2005] 2 All ER 571). Exponents maintain that pre-trial preparation has a beneficial impact on the ability of inexperienced witnesses to monitor comprehension of lawyers’ questions and provide accurate testimony (for discussion see Ellison, 2007). More specifically, familiarisation is said to put witnesses ‘on their guard’ with the result that they are more likely to seek clarification and less likely to be confused or unduly influenced by the form of cross-examination questions. In a context in which witness familiarisation has attracted little empirical attention, this [...] project sought to evaluate the basis of these claims.

According to the AHRC briefing report, the researchers used the following methodology:

Sixty adult participants recruited from the community watched a 5 minute video depicting a criminal offence and were then individually cross-examined about its contents according to four conditions by a qualified barrister in a mock courtroom environment. Participants in Group One underwent a ‘lawyerese’-scripted cross-examination, containing complex vocabulary, leading and multipart questions and double negatives. In Group Two, participants underwent a simply phrased cross-examination which – while containing leading and multipart questions – employed less complex vocabulary and contained no double negatives but was otherwise identical to the lawyerese script. After viewing the video event and prior to questioning, Groups Three and Four received a leaflet entitled A Guide to Cross-examination. In outline, this document contained a short explanation of the two-fold function of cross-examination – to test evidence and elicit information favourable to the cross-examiner’s case – and practical guidance to assist participants when answering questions which included directions to listen carefully to questions, to ask for clarification if a question was not fully understood and to answer all questions truthfully. The leaflet also included an example of a leading question, a question containing a double negative and a multipart question, and, in reference to leading and multipart questions, advice that participants should not agree with a suggestion ventured by the cross-examiner unless it was accurate. Participants in Group Three then underwent the same scripted cross-examination as participants in Group One while participants in Group Four underwent the same scripted cross-examination as participants in Group Two. The cross-examinations were recorded, transcribed and scored for accuracy.

The key research findings include:

• “The use of complex vocabulary and syntax during cross-examination was associated with reduced adult witness accuracy
• Prepared witnesses were significantly more likely than their unprepared counterparts to provide correct responses to cross-examination questions
• Prepared witnesses were additionally more likely to seek clarification during cross-examination
• Prepared witnesses were typically appreciative of the guidance they received prior to questioning”

According to the researchers, the research results will be formally reported in academic journal articles in the coming months.

The research was summarized in Guidance on cross-examination improves accuracy of witness testimony (15 June 2010), a press release issued by the University of Liverpool.

Thanks to Dr. Wheatcroft and Dr. Ellison for sending the AHRC briefing report.

Venturi on Legal Language and Legal Knowledge Management Applications

Giulia Venturi of l’Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale del CNR di Pisa (ILC-CNR) has published Legal Language and Legal Knowledge Management Applications, in Semantic Processing of Legal Texts: Where the Language of Law Meets the Law of Language 3-26 (Enrico Francesconi et al. eds., 2010). (Click here for a description of the print version of the book.)

This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at SPLeT 2008: Workshop on Semantic Processing of Legal Texts, held 27 May 2008 in Marrakech, Morocco.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

This work is an investigation into the peculiarities of legal language with respect to ordinary language. Based on the idea that a shallow parsing approach can help to provide enough detailed linguistic information, this work presents the results obtained by shallow parsing (i.e. chunking) corpora of Italian and English legal texts and comparing them with corpora of ordinary language. In particular, this paper puts the emphasis of how understanding the syntactic and lexical characteristics of this specialised language has practical importance in the development of domain–specific Knowledge Management applications.