It is not true that the language of law is always artificial, redundant, archaic, obscure, a true anti-language as Italo Calvino defined it. Not at all. Browsing the pages of major jurists, from Scialoja to Calamandrei, to Satta, not only do you discover a lexical choice, a syntax, a pleasure of reading that have nothing to envy to those of the masters of literature, but also the idea that a true legal proposition must be clear, because legal thought must be clear.
Attending students:
notes from the lectures and materials to be distributed by the teacher through the Moodle platform
Non-attending students:
Luca Serianni, Prima lezione di grammatica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2006, pp. 3-165;
L’italiano giuridico che cambia, edited by Federigo Bambi and Barbara Pozzo, Firenze, Accademia della Crusca, 2012, pp. 3-247;
Piero Fiorelli, Intorno alle parole del diritto, Milano, Giuffrè, 2008, pp. 1-128.
Learning Objectives
By examining the historical development of legal language and its theoretical aspects, the course intends to provide the required knowledge for a conscious use of language in the different aspects and modes of legal discourse.
Prerequisites
None
Teaching Methods
Lectures: 48 hours. Part of the course will be a seminar with the active participation of students engaged in writing and rewriting legal texts and in the diplomatic-interpretive editing of ancient documents.
Further information
Students willing to attend the course should enrol in the Moodle platform.
Attendance will be checked by roll call.
A maximum of 3 unexcused absences will be allowed.
Type of Assessment
Assessment is oral. Students are required to discuss a written report on the subject indicated in the seminar and to answer questions on the lectures’ programme, proving that they can use different language registers and different ways of legal discourse. They should also show organisational ability, critical reasoning, synthesis and concision when needed: in sum, that they are aware of and participating in the effort jurists have to do to make their writing effective and intelligible to every audience, direct and indirect. Incredible to write (and to read): the exam is supposed to ascertain if students have studied, and therefore learned, the course’s programme and teachings.
Course program
The course will adopt a particular point of view, language as a means of expressing legal thought. The goal is to overcome a commonplace: that the language of law is always artificial, redundant, archaic, obscure, a true anti-language as Italo Calvino defined it. Not at all. Browsing the pages of major jurists, from Scialoja to Calamandrei, to Satta, not only do you discover a lexical choice, a syntax, a pleasure of reading that have nothing to envy to those of the masters of literature, but also the idea that a true legal proposition – though it cannot give up technical wording – must be clear, because legal thought must be clear (Scialoja): no such thing as a necessarily convoluted and grandiloquent legal language!
And all those who work with the words of law, or a technical language, should perhaps bear this principle in mind, freeing their writing (and their speech) of centuries-old heaviness and concretions: the course will try to show how, switching between historical-theoretical lectures and exercises on texts possibly taken from legal practice, and keeping the latest legislative news on the subject matter into account.
The main topics to be treated are: 1) between Latin and vernacular: the birth and development of legal language; 2) comparison with other languages: French, German and – today – English; 3) the language of law, the language of legal practice, the language of administration: how they were, how they are, and how they should be.
In particular:
Introduction: a merciless diagnosis, Calamandrei and the honest bribery, Calvino and Gadda; specific technicalities (oblato), redefinitions (attività contrattuale), collateral technicalities (risalente); writing an opinion; the syntax of legal discourse: anteposition, narrative imperfect, overextension of infinitive in completive sentences, long sentences, excessive use of subordination; the principle of clarity and concision; the reasons of an obscure language: on teaching legal Italian; the programme and the organisation of the course.
Legal language born in the trial: Capua (starting with Boccaccio...); Prato and a bilingual edict of 1287; some criminal reports; the Florentine Tribunale della Mercanzia.
Towards a historical outline of legal language: the origins, Capua again, then the Bolognese rediscovery; notary’s role and the various types of vulgarisation; the new words; the legal scholar and the question of language; an epochal change: French replaces Latin; the influence of German; a new protagonist, English: the professional, the transaction, lastly the stepchild adoption.
An example of good legal language: judgment n. 42/2017 of the Constitutional Court?
Legal language between vice and virtue. On an old prejudice, again (with reference to Calvino and Gadda); Manzoni and Muratori; Calamandrei in the Constituent Assembly (and Scialoja); the Constitution as a model for everyone; the lexical, syntactical and rhetorical features of the 1948 Constitution; the Constitution as a model of legislating technique; a readable law: judgment n. 364 of 1988 of the Constitutional Court; discovering the legal lexicon; on specific technicalities again: the cases of reato and stare a contadino; and mind the errors! Redefinitions, collateral technicalities; confusione and possesso; di talché and salvo. Syntax: enclisis of sì, overextension of infinitive in completive sentences, completive sentences with infinitive, position of the adjective with respect to noun, anteposition of verb to the subject, uses of subjunctive, present participle with verbal value, narrative imperfect, abstracts and nominalisation; the length of sentences and periods: some examples mostly from case law; synthesis and concision; legislative and case law evolution; a look at punctuation: commas, semicolons, colons; conclusion with Alessandro Manzoni and Roberto Ridolfi.
The language of administration: the features of the language of administration; a Florentine tombstone, a famous poetry and a playful rewriting; bureaucratese; a few particular “users”; Meuccio Ruini, Vincenzo Monti, Lionardo Salviati, Francesco Guicciardini and the language of offices; specific technicalities and collateral technicalities; titolo di viaggio; syntax, in particular on nominalisation and redundancy (moduli appositi); simplification, from the nineteenth century to today; the bureaucrat’s training; the language of administration as the model of the emerging national language; a proceeding and a notice.
Towards a clear and concise legal writing: general principles of effective public writing; the road to follow: legibility indices; lexical and syntactical features: always to be changed? Brevity, synthesis, concision; attention to condensing. Towards a compendium of good legal writing.
The course requires an “intense” participation of students through tests of writing and rewriting: every attending student shall present reports on the various forms of legal language and, through a concrete exercise in writing, will be trained to form texts (and thoughts) that are as far as possible free of those features that often make legal language a real stereotype of “anti-language”: pseudo-technicalities, old-fashioned and useless terms, complex constructions unjustified by the complexities of the issues being treated, etc. etc. A correct use of vocabularies, and of the resources (including online) made available by today’s technology, may be helpful: the course will try and provide a basic training in the use of these tools, also through guided tours (of the Crusca Academy) and participation in external seminars. A few short rudiments of palaeographic technique will help stimulate the development of problem-solving techniques. Students will learn them on the field when faced with a folio of a fourteenth century manuscript for an attempt at a diplomatic-interpretive edition.