Zombie Languages

Judge Alice Batchelder insists that latin is not a dead language. Unfortunately Latin isn't dead in her court, but frankly it should be. After all how can you write and enforce laws and regulations on a people who are not capable of understanding them? That's just bad documentation.

Should I become God Emperor of the Universe, I intend to make edicts to repair some of the great injustices in the World. My first law will be that laws applying to the general populace shall be written in a manner and language that is easily understandable by the general populace. This isn't hard to do, you just grab a bunch of congressional pages (who generally are in the middle of their college education), give them copies of proposed legislation, and ask them whether they can understand it. If not, you must rewrite it. Exceptions would be made for technical regulations which apply to professionals in a given field and not to the general populace as a whole.

For instance, all citizens should be able to understand most of the tax code and most criminal law. However corporate and business taxes could be more complex as could the criminal code apply to, say, securities fraud. The first apply to the general populace, the latter to professionals.

It is one thing if you break the law because you are ignorant of it. It is another if the law (and by extension the case law) is so obfuscated by technical jargon that it cannot be understood by a non-professional. The first is at least partially the fault of the law breaker, while the second is a fundamental failing of the government itself.