COMPREHENSIBILITY OF LEGAL RULES AS A MEANS OF SMART REGULATION

Authors

  • Marina L. Davydova Volgograd State University
  • Marina Yu. Kozlova Volgograd State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14571/brajets.v16.n2.474-483

Keywords:

legal technique, language of law, legal term, rules of legal technique, accessibility of law

Abstract

Abstract. Improving the efficiency of legal regulation is among the crucial priorities in modern law-making policy. This issue is considered, in particular, within the framework of the smart regulation concept, aimed at developing tools for achieving the greatest regulatory effect at the least material, organizational, time, etc. expenditures. An important requirement of smart regulation is the use of comprehensible legal language, since without communicating the content of legal rules to the addressee, the improvement of other means of legal influence is just meaningless. The present paper, using the data of published studies based on the method of computational linguistics, proves that the simplification of the legislative language involves not only the replacement of complicated terms with more understandable ones. The wordiness of the text, its excessive volume, and numerous repetitions also make it difficult to understand the meaning of legal rules both for an unprepared reader and for a professional. Contextual abbreviations, the potential of which to improve the readability of the legal text is not sufficiently used by the legislator, are considered here as a means of solving the above-mentioned problem.

References

Belov, S.A. & Gulida, V.B. (2019). Language of legal documents: difficulties of understanding. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Proceedings of the Institute for Linguistic Research. 1(15), 56-103. (in Russian)

Blasie, M. A. (2023). Regulating Plain Language. Wis. L. Rev., 687.

Borovkova, E. (2021). Structural-Semantic and Linguistic-Stylistic Features of O. Wilde’s Maxims. Modern Studies of Social Issues, 13(2), 55-70. https://doi.org/10.12731/2077-1770-2021-13-2-55-70

Davydova, M. L., & Makarov, V. O. (2020, March). Smart Technologies in Lawmaking: Towards the Concept of Smart Regulation. In Institute of Scientific Communications Conference (pp. 1296-1305). Cham: Springer International Publishing.. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59126-7_142

Gunningham, N., & Sinclair, D. (2017). Smart regulation. Regulatory theory: Foundations and applications, 133-148.

Jamalpour, H., & Derabi, J. Y. (2023). Aesthetic Experience, Neurology and Cultural Memory. Passagens: Revista Internacional de História Política e Cultura Jurídica, vol. `5, no. 2, pp. 340-348, https://doi.org/10.15175/1984-2503-202315208

Kuchakov, R., & Savelyev, D. (2018). Complexity of Legal Acts in Russia: Lexical and Syntactic Quality of Texts. (Series "Analytical Notes on the Problems of Law Enforcement"). St. Petersburg, 2018. (in Russian) Available from: https://enforce.spb.ru/images/analit_zapiski/memo_readability_2018_web.pdf

Kynev, A. V. (2017). State Duma of the Russian Federation of the 7th Convocation: Between “Sleeping Potential” and Party Discipline. Russian Politics & Law, 55(3), 223-242.

Lubozheva, L. (2021). Despecialization of Economic Terminology. Modern Studies of Social Issues, 13(2), 102-110. https://doi.org/10.12731/2077-1770-2021-13-2-102-110

Mellinkoff, D. (1963). The Language of the Law. Boston, 1963. 454 p.

Panina, O. V., & Pavlyukova, O. V. (2015). Proposals of increasing the openness and transparency of executive authorities. Смальта, (2), 87-90.

Pogosyan, V. (2021). Systemic approach in phenomenon research (historiographic etude). Voprosy Istorii, (4 (2)), 253.https://doi.org/10.31166/VoprosyIstorii202104Statyi62

Saveliev, D.V. (2020). A Study in Complexity of Sentences Constituting Russian Federation Legal Acts. Pravo. Zhurnal Vysshey shkoly ekonomiki, 1, 50–74 (in Russian) https://doi.org/10.17323/2072-8166.2020.1.50.74

Tightiz L, Yoo J. (2023), A novel deep reinforcement learning based business model arrangement for Korean net-zero residential micro-grid considering whole stakeholders’ interests. ISA transactions. 1;137:471-91.

Williams, C. (2004). Legal English and plain language: An introduction. ESP across Cultures, 1(1), 111-124.

Wontorczyk, A., & Gaca, S. (2021). Study on the relationship between drivers’ personal characters and non-standard traffic signs comprehensibility. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(5), 2678.

Zainal, A. G., Djimad, H., Rudy, Suciska, W., & Djausal, G. P. (2022). Economic analysis and investment in fuel industry considering risk management by analytical hierarchy process. Economic Annals-XXI, 197(5-6), 10-16. doi: https://doi.org/10.21003/ea.V197-02

Ződi, Z. (2019). The limits of plain legal language: understanding the comprehensible style in law. International Journal of Law in Context, 15(3), 246-262. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552319000260

Downloads

Published

2023-11-16

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2023)

Section

Novel approaches in education, society and culture development

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Marina L. Davydova, Marina Yu. Kozlova

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The BRAJETS follows the policy for Open Access Journals, provides immediate and free access to its content, following the principle that making scientific knowledge freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge and provides more international democratization of knowledge. Therefore, no fees apply, whether for submission, evaluation, publication, viewing or downloading of articles. In this sense, the authors who publish in this journal agree with the following terms: A) The authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right to first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), allowing the sharing of the work with recognition of the authorship of the work and initial publication in this journal. B) Authors are authorized to distribute non-exclusively the version of the work published in this journal (eg, publish in the institutional and non-institutional repository, as well as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal. C) Authors are encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (eg, online repositories or on their personal page), as well as to increase the impact and citation of the published work.