Styles of Legislation and Their Effects

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing—Oscar Wilde1 Until recently, matters of legislative style were not often given serious consideration in legal scholarship. First, because legislative style was not perceived as a matter of consequence; secondly, because style was seen as a question of taste, and thus not very well suited as a subject of objective research; and thirdly because legislation itself has generally been little studied by academics.2 Such limited academic consideration of the style of legislation as there has been is largely prescriptive in approach. It mainly makes the case for clear, precise, and simple drafting in order to improve the accessibility, readability, and comprehensibility of legislation or law-related documents3 or, on similar reasoning, advocates law reform by using plain language.4 Yet the style of legislation does matter and is therefore worthwhile studying both from an academic point of view as well for practical purposes. Legislation in itself is a style, the form in which we cast public interventions. In order to underline their importance, we wrap decisions like these in a ceremonious packing to indicate that the proper procedure was followed and that, by force of its style, it can rightly be deemed law. So legislation is, first of all, a channel of symbolic communication.5 We read more out of legislation than we would from an ordinary text. Legislation denotes a level of agreement, authority, command and obligation to comply, force of law, and—at least the expectation of—expression of principles of justice. Or, as Gibbon, notes: Laws are coded in language, and the processes of the law are mediated through language. The legal system puts into action a society's beliefs and values ….6