Tradition and Change in Legal English

Technological Innovations Tackling Biodiversity Loss: Solutions or Misdirection?

“…127 In addition to the passive language within the paragraph, this indicates that the drafters sought to ensure that this provision was as broad as possible. 128 The difference between operative and preamble language and the use of mandatory and non-mandatory language was common across all the texts and will be considered in more detail below.…”

Curious Legal Conditionals

“…While it is correct that the use of SHALL in legal English if clauses is quite an old pattern, as implied in the evasive comments in Klinge (1995) and Williams (2007), it is thus not true, as intimated by the same authors, that it is unsystematic and / or defunct. As shown above, it has continued in the same form for five centuries and has outlived the demise of the pattern in general English at least by a century and a half.…”

“…The same dismissive attitude is voiced in Williams (2007), who likewise views the use of SHALL in if clauses as a harmless relic of the past that need not be bothered with or accounted for:…”

“…Secondly, the approach pursued above offers a straightforward explanation of the reason why the practitioners of simplifying legal English usually do not replace SHALL with other modal verbs but prefer to remove it and rephrase all affected clauses in the simple present (Williams 2007). If SHALL really profiled the imposition of an obligation, replacing it with MUST, HAVE TO, etc.…”

“…It has been noted in a number of studies that its use in legal texts is substantially more frequent than elsewhere in English (e.g. Williams 2007, WitczakPlisiecka 2009 and resilient enough to withstand so far the zealous calls to weed it out repeatedly made by the supporters of simplifying legal writing (e.g. Kimble 2000).…”