Language of Law

Our legislation, legal pleadings, documents, agreements, sale deeds, insurance contracts are lengthy, ridden with jargon and confusing. We in India must join the plain language movement

- Justice Kamaljit Singh Garewal (Retd)

FROM the white cliffs of Do ver, the gleaming lights of Calais are only twenty miles. Yet United Kingdom and France have followed widely different pathways of justice. Here we are not going to discuss the common law/civil law conundrum but the language of law.

It all began at Hastings in 1066, when Normans from France defeated England. William, the Conqueror, claimed the throne as King of England, to be crowned William I of England. And France well and truly began to colonise England. King William’s first task was to administer justice to the Anglo-Saxons. William’s followers became the new Norman ruling class and imposed their language, Old French, on the upper echelons of society. Anglo-Saxon dialects were supplanted by Normans in the royal court, aristocratic circles, the justice system, and the Church. Influential Norman settlers used their native language in daily life, but more modest rural and urban areas of society continued to speak varieties of English. Roman law written in Latin was imported, Old French became the language of the courts, while the populace was Anglo-Saxon. So judgments based on law in Latin, were written in Old French for people who understood only auld English. This made every pleading, document and judgment three times longer than necessary. French was a Roman language, similar to Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with no connection with Sanskrit. English was related to West Germanic tongues like Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic which are closely related to Sanskrit.