LEGALESE IN LAW

Spoken and Written English is very different from the language used among ordinary citizens and is expressed in contracts, wills and other legal documents.

Legalese differs from day-to-day spoken and written English in ways, including the use of specialised vocabulary, syntactic constructions, and set phrases such as legal doublets.

Legal English has traditionally been the preserve of lawyers in many english speaking countries, U.S., the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, and South Africa, including India which have shared common law traditions. However, due to the spread of Legal English as the predominant language of international business, as well as its role as a legal language within the European Union, Legal English is now a global phenomenon.

A legal doublet is a phrase used very often in English legal Language which consists of two or more words that are irreversible binomials and frequently synonyms, usually connected by "and", such as "null and void". The order of the words cannot be reversed, as it would be seen as particularly unusual to ask someone to desist and cease or to have property owned clear and free, when these common legal phrases are universally known as cease and desist and free and clear.

The doubling—and sometimes even tripling—often originates in the transition from use of one language for legal purposes to another: in Britain, from a native English term to a Latin or Law French term; in Romance-speaking countries, from Latin to the vernacular. To ensure understanding, the terms from both languages were used. This reflected the interactions between Germanic and Roman law following the decline of the Roman Empire. These phrases are often pleonasms and form irreversible binomials.

In other cases the two components have differences which are subtle, appreciable only to lawyers, or obsolete. For example, ways and means, referring to methods and resources respectively, are differentiable, in the same way that tools and materials, or equipment and funds, are differentiable—but the difference between them is often practically irrelevant to the contexts in which the irreversible binomial ways and means is used today in non-legal contexts as a mere cliché.

Doublets may also have arisen or persisted because the solicitors and clerks who drew up conveyances and other documents were paid by the word, which tended to encourage verbosity.

Their habitual use has been decried by some legal scholars as "redundant" and "superfluous" in modern legal briefs.

Doublets and Triplets

  • law and order
  • legal and valid
  • let or hindrance
  • lewd and lascivious conduct
  • liens and encumbrances
  • make and enter into[
  • marque and reprisal
  • metes and bounds
  • mind and memory
  • null and void
  • over and above
  • oyer and terminer
  • pains and penalties
  • part and parcel
  • perform and discharge
  • power and authority
  • sac and soc
  • sale or transfer
  • signed and sealed
  • sole and exclusive
  • successors and assigns
  • terms and conditions
  • then and in that event
  • toll and team
  • true and correct
  • waif and stray
  • ways and means
  • will and testament

Triplets

  • arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable
  • cancel, annul and set aside
  • convey, transfer and set over
  • give, devise and bequeath
  • grant, bargain and sell
  • name, constitute and appoint
  • null, void and of no effect
  • tamper with, damage, or destroy
  • ordered, adjudged and decreed
  • peace, amity and commerce
  • remise, release and forever quit claim
  • rest, residue and remainder
  • right, title and interest
  • signed, sealed and delivered
  • to all intents, constructions and purposes
  • way, shape or form

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