The Case Against the Law: Legal Jargon, Legal Learning, and Legal Legerdemain.

The Case Against the Law: Legal Jargon, Legal Learning, and Legal Legerdemain By Ken Vinson

Legerdemain: a noun meaning "sleight of hand," from the Middle English "light of hand." Such is Ken Vinson's fascinating, if paradoxical, diatribe on the nature of lawyers and their practice.

In language as vexing as that which he claims to denounce, Vinson makes his argument that "[l]awyer-magicians tend to get away with their word-magic because the public craves the lawyers' offer of a secular courthouse religion, a wise-governing goose that lays golden eggs."

While lawyers are casting spells on the public at large, Vinson's The Case Against the Law purports to break them by "offer[ing] clues for solving the mysteries of the verbal atrocities that make up legaldom's legalspeak." The stated purpose of the book, in essence, is to refute the utility of "legalese" and argue, in place of the jargon that buttresses lawyers' ivory towers, that "I should be able to deed you my house without the ritual[istic language] of 'party of the first part.'"

Citing Plato, Dickens, Mohammed, and the Book of Luke, Vinson makes his case against the holiness of legal jargon. But if "the legal tribe's habit of hiding lawyerly thoughts and actions behind clouds of legal slang ... has long bred distrust among the laity," one must wonder what service Vinson is providing by attempting to reign in that distrust using so much of the very language he calls "shadowy" and "unsavory."

In spite of its use of lofty legal dialect, The Case Against the Law makes the important point that the law is for the people and should be written as such in order to maintain accountability on the parts of our leaders. However, Vinson argues, "the Law" has been so revered as to have been improperly made into a religion, a great mythological creature, a romance, and even a science, all written in a foreign language.

Ultimately, Vinson implores the lay public to "wise up to the intellectual fraud that is the law." But is this really a book for "the laity"? Vinson assures lawyers that "surely a public recognition of the legerdemain plaguing legal reasoning won't topple the walls of civilization." It is precisely because of this sort of language that, while the import of Vinson's message cannot be questioned, his effectiveness in conveying it must be.

The Case Against the Law is published by Sentry Press in Tallahassee.