Local Legalese Word of the Day: "Organicity"

What does it mean (as a legal term, not a medical one)? And where?

Comments

[scattergood]

6. Law - Denoting or relating to the fundamental or constitutional laws and precepts of a government or an organization.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/organicity#:~:text=Law%20Denoting%20or%20relating%20to,a%20government%20or%20an%20organization.

[hardreaders]

That sounds right to me, for how much that counts. It doesn’t seem like a tough one. Anyone familiar with basic legal vocab knows an “organic” law usually refers to something like a constitution or an agency’s enabling statute. So “organicity” can be derived from that as denoting to what degree something is foundational. But until EV weighs in this is all guesswork.

[Leppo]

https://casetext.com/case/in-re-request-of-camacho

Used that way here

[Leppo]

In Guam

[hardreaders]

Thanks for tracking down that case! Scattergood and I didn't answer the "where" component of the question, but maybe you just have: Guam.

[Krayt]

Good job looking it up!

[DaivdBehar]

Any legal utterance written above the 6th grade reading level fails to give notice and is void. It violates the Fifth Amendment, including in torts and in contracts. These involve punishment for violations and are subject to the Fifth Amendment.

Any Latin is from the Catholic Church and voids the legal utterance. It violates the Establishment Clause. I understand that 40% of English words are Latin in origin. However, they are standard English and do not promote a church.

[bernard11]

And here I thought Latin was more than 2000 years old.

[DaivdBehar]

Who uses Latin today to communicate, and no one else? Catholic priests.

[James Pollock]

The Judean People's Front!

[Brian Thomas]

Ironically your comment is rated at just under an 8th grade reading level (7.9).

[DaivdBehar]

Did you understand it? If you did, you received notice. However the reading level in the US is lower, and all legal utterances must be below 6th grade. That low reading ability is, of course, thanks to the Education Law bar, that destroyed our teachers' ability to teach. You lawyers empowered Democrat thugs, and destroyed school discipline.

[James Pollock]

You keep repeating this demand that everything has to be written for stupid people. It's self-serving and fools no-one.

[Bored Lawyer]

"Any legal utterance written above the 6th grade reading level fails to give notice and is void."

Ahh, the Protects-Morons interpretation of the Due Process Clause. I must have been out in the bathroom when my law-school professor was lecturing on that.

[DaivdBehar]

Your prof was a rent seeking lawyer d-word, as Volokh is. Nothing he said to you has the slightest empirical nor even legal validity. The commission of a mass crime voids the legal utterance.

Briefly in rent seeking, money is collected at the point of a gun in taxes. It is then given to a special interest by the government that returns nothing of value. They just took the money. In the case of the lawyer profession, they destroy the economy, not just take the money and make life unlivable for everyone, including themselves.

Forget any math.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[James Pollock]

Point to the doll where the lawyer touched you.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Read Harvey Silverglate's _Three Felonies a Day_ -- and then tell me again how a "Protects-Morons" clause would be a bad thing...

[DaivdBehar]

It is probably more than three if the person has a job. Only prosecotor discretion keeps the entire nation from being in federal prison.

[James Pollock]

" tell me again how a “Protects-Morons” clause would be a bad thing…"

I can see why you'd want one.

[great Unknown]

the Protects-Morons interpretation is a penumbra of the explicit phrase "jury of their peers". Much more explicit than the shadows from which abortion rulings have crawled.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Jesus spoke Aramaic and that is what much of the New Testament was written in. And the King James Bible was published in 1611 -- the Protestants abanded Latin over 400 years ago.

Not that facts matter...

[DaivdBehar]

So why does English law contain Latin? Because it is really a rent seeking French law scam.

[James Pollock]

"So why does English law contain Latin?"

Because it doesn't? English statutes are written in English.

On the other hand, long after common use of Latin died out, smart people kept using it because important books were written in Latin. Use of proper Latin was a sign of education Which is why, over 1900 years post-Jesus, the Monty Python crew (all them well-educated) was still making fun of Latin instruction in "Life of Brian".
This is also why there's Latin on American coinage. The Founders were also well-educated people, so they chose a Latin motto for their new country, despite very few Latin speakers among the population.

[Ben of Houston]

The New Testament was actually written primarily in Greek, the lingua franca of the Eastern Roman Empire. Nearly half of the epistles were written to cities in Greece proper.

Jesus himself would have spoken both Aramaic and Hebrew, and as a tradesman, he probably had at least a smattering of Greek as well.

[Aunt Teefah]

Does the Ex Post Facto Clause violate the Establishment Clause, on account of it being Latin?

[DaivdBehar]

The Establishment Clause came afterward, and voided it. Sorry.

[James Pollock]

"Any legal utterance written above the 6th grade reading level fails to give notice and is void"

This wouldn't be true if you were better at reading.

[DaivdBehar]

Organicity: Of, marked by, or involving the use of fertilizers or pesticides that are strictly of animal or vegetable origin.

Whatever the legal meaning, it means, bullshit.

[BigChiefWahoo]

That was my guess, as well. "Degree of organicness" in the context of "organic" food, etc.

[DaivdBehar]

In the context of food, organic means, more expensive, yet more likely to spoil, more likely to contain disease and vermin.

[James Pollock]

In the context of food, organic means approximately nothing. Put another way, it means whatever the person who uses it wants it to mean.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I like to remind people that arsenic, lead, and cyanide are all "organic" (or come in organic forms) -- the first two are elements.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Arsenic -- in rocks -- is a BIG issue of concern in many states.

People drilled wells and were wise enough to have the water these wells produce tested -- and while the Arsenic level isn't enough to kill them outright, it is still high enough to cause them real problems over time if they drink that water. The science on that is fairly solid...

And it's completely "organic" -- it's being leached out of the bedrock...

[James Pollock]

If only "organic" meant "leached out of bedrock"... but it doesn't, to anyone but you. Are you confusing "natural" and "organic"? Because these aren't equivalent terms.

[VinniUSMC]

Organicity

Isn't that the name of the palace in "The Wizard of Oz"?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I thought it was an album by The Police.

[James Pollock]

It's the name of the county seat in Clackamas county, Oregon.

[Commenter_XY]

Of, or pertaining to an organized structure.

[Jerry B.]

If you have a Hammond B3, organicity requires that you play it through a Leslie speaker.

[DRM]

Meaning: Constitutionality (since the local constitution is called the Organic Law).

Where: The Kingdom of Talossa, comprising Milwaukee east of the Milwaukee River, the island of Cézembre off Brittany, and the sector of Antarctica between 158°W and 103°24'W.

[ThePublius]

American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology:

organicity
n. a former term for brain damage or dysfunction.

[DaivdBehar]

That applies to the effect of 1L on intelligent, ethical, good looking young people.

[gormadoc]

Law school makes people uglier? Does STEM have any similar effect?

[DaivdBehar]

Lawyers are good looking, nice. and charming as a class. I regret the devastating damage inflicted on these great people. I even hired a lawyer that sued me, and he lost. He did a great job for my case. Not only that, but he got his fee from the other side. What more could you ask for? People should understand how much I love this occupation. There is no greater love than one great enough to correct.

[James Pollock]

"Law school makes people uglier? Does STEM have any similar effect?"

Nope. Engineers are well-paid, which has a known positive effect on appearance.

[Voize of Reazon]

Wasn't Organicity an 80s album by The Police?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Oh crap, you got there ahead of me! I should have read the whole thread before making the exact same joke.

[Kevin Smith]

Rear-end joinder?

[James Pollock]

Leave the gay stuff out of it.

[Eugene Volokh]

As some have noted, it means consistency with the Organic Law -- roughly the equivalent of the territorial constitution -- in Guam.

[Commenter_XY]

I learned something new, professor. Thank you.

[DaivdBehar]

Hi, lawyer d-word. Here is a quiz question. Who owns the law?

Read this analysis, "Elements common to embezzlement are as follows: (1) the property must belong to a person other than the accused, such as an employer or principal; (2) the property must be converted subsequent to the defendant's original and lawful possession of it; (3) the defendant must be in a position of trust, so that the property is held by him or her pursuant to some fiduciary duty; and (4) the defendant must have an intent to defraud the owner at the time of the conversion."

Discuss, you lawyer d-word.

[Minadin]

Well, I'm not a lawyer - it's possible that I'm a d-word - but I would argue that the law, in a modern western style liberal democracy, is owned by the people who give their consent to be governed by the rules, laws, and governments they choose.

[DaivdBehar]

Not being a lawyer, you are correct. I lend you my car. You change the key. I have to pay you to use the new key, you have stolen my car. Lawyer language is theft, fulfills the elements of embezzlement

[James Pollock]

When you stop pounding your head against brick walls, do you get any relief? Or is the damage permanent?

[James Pollock]

To a chemist, "organic" means that it has carbon in it.