Having Fun with Law Review Prose

Machine-splaining academic writing

Everyone could use a laugh right now, so check out the tl;dr Papers site that transforms scholarly writing to a second-grade level for you. Originally developed to use for scientific abstracts, it works equally well for law review articles (as I discovered thanks to Prof. Chad Oldfather). Here is the abstract for my "Tinder Lies" article, transformed:

The rise of Internet dating has been a real problem for lots of people. People can use their phones to find dates, and it's easier for bad people to lie about who they really are. For example, some people lie about how old they are, or how rich they are, or even what kind of person they are.

And here is their version of "Secret Jurisdiction", my piece with Cassandra Robertson:

The government has a secret list of people who are not allowed to fly on airplanes. The government won't tell you if you're on the list, and they won't tell you why. But you can't fly on airplanes if you're on the list.

Enjoy.

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

Any legal utterance that reads above the sixth grade should be void for failing to give notice.

[DaivdBehar]

Lawyer language is a fraudulent method to impose their worthless rent seeking.

[DaivdBehar]

All those Terms of Use are void for unconscionability, procedural and substantive. All credit card and lease agreements are void for the same reason.

[DaivdBehar]

A judge is a legal expert, no? If a judge cannot explain the content of a bill, of an agreement, of a regulation, it is void for failing to give notice, and for being unconscionable.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Any legal document that uses words that are too hard for a second grader to understand should be thrown out because it does not give the reader any information about what it says.

Lawyers use fancy words to confuse people so they can get more money for doing less work.

All those Terms of Use are void for being unfair.

The judge is a legal expert. If he cannot explain the content of a bill, it is void because he did not give notice, and it is unconscionable.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

To be honest, I'm impressed that (a) this thing works as well as it does; (b) David Behar's rants come through almost unchanged. Ranting notwithstanding, he writes more clearly than I had thought.

[Kevin Smith]

Basically means he's already writing at a second grade level. Maybe it's intentional for clarity, maybe it represents the limits of his education.

[Michael P]

I recommend paying somewhat close to a few of his comments (and then generally ignoring him). One might appreciate the conciseness and direct pointedness of expression, even while dismissing the substance, style and prospect for future improvement.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I appreciate the general thrust of his arguments, that the country has become too legalized, too caught up in legal quibbles and subterfuge. There are two recent good examples:
* Mississippi's medical marijuana initiative being thrown out because the initiatives law requires signatures from all five congressional districts, yet Mississippi lost a district 20 years ago.
* The third party doctrine, whereby the government can get any information it wants without the bother of search warrants, because two people can keep a secret only if one is dead, therefore people have no expectation of privacy when bank records, phone records, etc are in the hands of a bank or phone company.

Both are utterly at odds with common sense. Both are what happens when government officials (judges, prosecutors, police, burrocrats) define the limits of government power.

But David Behar's rants lack imagination and humor, and are too repetitive to bear reading.

[DaivdBehar]

Michael, if you are a lawyer, you are just defending the rent. Rent means, taking money, returning nothing of value, save avoiding violence. It is a form of armed robbery, and should be criminalized.

[DaivdBehar]

The program took out my legal jargon, without changing any meaning. That shows legal jargon is not necessary at all.

[LawTalkingGuy]

This actually is not entirely wrong.

[Cal Cetín]

I tried the first paragraph of Tale of Two Cities, and got this:

"It was a very great time in history. It was a very bad time in history. The times were very good. The times were very bad. The people were very wise. The people were very foolish. The people believed in God. The people did not believe in God. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything to look forward to. We had nothing to look forward to. Some people said we were going to Heaven. Some people said we were going to Hell."

[Brophy]

Dickens is nonsense that can't be translated into English. Try a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

[Cal Cetín]

Let's try the Constitution!

"The United States Congress can make laws about everything, as long as it's for the good of the whole country. They can collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay for the national debt and for general welfare. This means that if a state doesn't want to pay for something, the Federal government has to pay for it. The Congress can borrow money from other countries and from other states. They can also change the way money is made up and the value of it. They can make laws about how much money people have to pay when they go bankrupt. They can make laws that protect the United States from being copied by other countries by making sure that our money is different from theirs."

Close enough?

[Life of Brian]

This means that if a state doesn't want to pay for something, the Federal government has to pay for it.

By Jove, you've found the Millennials' secret decoder ring!

[Brophy]

That's pretty good but I'm sure that you could confuse it by asking it to explain the Fourteenth Amendment.

[Cal Cetín]

"First, everyone born in the United States is a citizen of the United States, and everyone who lives here is a citizen of the state they live in. Second, no state can make a law that will take away your rights as a citizen of the United States. Third, no state can make a law that will take away your rights as a citizen of the state you live in. Fourth, your rights are taken away only if you don't have a fair trial and are treated badly by the law. Fifth, all people who live in the United States and all states must obey the constitution."

[Michael P]

"The rain was coming down hard. There were lots of wind, and it was dark. The rain was coming down hard, but then the wind stopped, and the rain fell a little softer."

It is no Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, but that may be a good thing.

[Sarcastr0]

This is very good.

[Dan Schiavetta]

One hardly needs to say it, but each example is an improvement over the original.

[Don Nico]

I strongly disagree, especially regarding Dickens.
Someone might try John Milton or at the other extreme, Ernest Hemingway

[Sarcastr0]

Readability, nuance, clarity. Choose 2.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Insofar as legal writing goes, I don't see any loss of nuance.

[Michael P]

The neural network yields results similar to a moron in a hurry. To pick examples, the Behar "legal expert" example introduced ambiguity about what was unconscionable (the judge, the judge's inability to explain, or the legal text being explained), the Article I rewrite mangled several of the clauses, and the Bulwer-Lytton sentence both changed the tense of verbs and lost details like the scene being London.

[MatthewSlyfield]

For shits and giggles, Song of the Witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth:

Original

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

TL;DR

Put a snake in a pot.Add the head of a newt.Add the tongue of a dog.Add a lizard's leg.Add a bat's wing.Add an owl's wing.Boil it all up.

[Cal Cetín]

This software is scary.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Eighth paragraph of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven:

Then a big black bird that looked like a raven,But I knew it was not a raven,“But you are not a raven!” I said to the bird.What is your name? Do you have a name?The black bird said, “Nevermore.”

[gormadoc]

Absolutely beautiful.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more;”

tl;dr

“Life is really hard, but we need to be brave and fight hard to get what we want. It's better to fight than just to give up and die.”

[Cal Cetín]

Greater moral clarity than the Bard.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Yeah it was interesting that the bot actually answered the question in the affirmative. Whereas Shakespeare keeps going with it and doesn’t really ever come to a resolution.

[bernard11]

But then it's not a good rendition.

Besides, doing this sort of thing with poetry or drama, where the language is meant to be heard as well as read - where hearing is often more important than reading - isn't going to go well. Nor will it go well when the writer is trying to convey a mental image, or in prose where the rhythm is important.

[MatthewSlyfield]

" isn't going to go well."

Well, Duh!

However, it can be amusing to see how badly it can go. 🙂

[bernard11]

Fair enough, Matthew.

[Krayt]

I have doubt this was created truly by the bot, and not had a little hand tweaking pushed into it. They must have done so with many famous phrases.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I actually had that thought too. I initially put in more of the speech…but it was kind of all
over the place and repeating lines verbatim. So I put in a short snippet and got this tidy thing instead

[TwelveInchPianist]

And everyone laughed at this quarrel.
This carpenter's wife was fooled,
Because of the carpenter's jealousy,
And Absalom kissed her nether-eye,
And Nicholas is scalded in the towt.
This tale is done, and God save all the rowdy people!""

[Cal Cetín]

Naturally, it's unfair to use software meant to summarize scientific abstracts and plug literature into it. So let's do it again.

Here's John Donne:

"If a person dies, it makes me sad, because I am part of the human race. So never ask, 'Who cares if a person dies?' The answer is: I do."

[Cal Cetín]

(that version took two attempts)

[Comanche Voter]

Secret jurisdiction and secret lists--and the Federal government--can drive you wild.

From the mid 70's through the late 80's I was doing a lot of international travel. Usually there wasn't a problem coming back home--just another corporate lawyer returning from a business trip.

Then one morning it took me two hours to get through immigration control. Same thing happened on the next trip. I filed a FOIA request to find out why this was happening. I got no response for two years. Finally an immigration agent took pity on me and gave me a clue. I'm 6' 5" tall. They were looking for somebody with my name, living in Miami, who had a birth date close to mine. But the agent said the person was 5' 10" tall.

Problem solved. Thereafter I told the agent(s) to "look at the screen" and see the height of the person you were looking for. Was my FOIA request ever answered? No.

[Archibald Tuttle]

"Make yourself invidded, with the keforth and the grepps. Be great with the floom and the sonic keptefin."

Translates to:

"Be yourself, with a friend and a girlfriend. Be good at sports, and have a nice smile.""He understood that the poem was about being confident with the things you are good at, and be yourself."

[Currentsitguy]

I found this one from the Ig Nobel Awards particularly hilarious.

https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-wildlife-diseases/volume-57/issue-2/2019-08-202/THE-PULMONARY-AND-METABOLIC-EFFECTS-OF-SUSPENSION-BY-THE-FEET/10.7589/2019-08-202.short

The original abstract:
"Abstract
Aerial translocation of captured black rhinoceroses (Diceros bicornis) has been accomplished by suspending them by their feet. We expected this posture would compromise respiratory gas exchange more than would lateral recumbency. Because white rhinoceroses (Ceratotherium simum) immobilized with etorphine alone are hypermetabolic, with a high rate of carbon dioxide production (VCO2), we expected immobilized black rhinoceroses would also have a high VCO2. Twelve (nine male, three female; median age 8 yr old [range: 4–25]; median weight 1,137 kg [range: 804–1,234] body weight) wild black rhinoceroses were immobilized by aerial darting with etorphine and azaperone. The animals were in lateral recumbency or suspended by their feet from a crane for approximately 10 min before data were collected. Each rhinoceros received both treatments sequentially, in random order. Six were in lateral recumbency first and six were suspended first. All animals were substantially hypoxemic and hypercapnic in both postures. When suspended by the feet, mean arterial oxygen pressure (PaO2) was 42 mm Hg, 4 mm Hg greater than in lateral recumbency (P=0.030), and arterial carbon dioxide pressure (PaCO2) was 52 mm Hg, 3 mm Hg less than in lateral recumbency (P=0.016). Tidal volume and minute ventilation were similar between postures. The mean VCO2 was 2 mL/kg/min in both postures and was similar to, or marginally greater than, VCO2 predicted allometrically. Suspension by the feet for 10 min did not impair pulmonary function more than did lateral recumbency and apparently augmented gas exchange to a small degree relative to lateral recumbency. The biological importance in these animals of numerically small increments in PaO2 and decrements in PaCO2 with suspension by the feet is unknown. Black rhinoceroses immobilized with etorphine and azaperone were not as hypermetabolic as were white rhinoceroses immobilized with etorphine."

The translation:
"They put the rhinoceros in a different way. And they found that the rhinoceros had the same amount of air in their lungs, and they breathed just as much when they were in the different way. And they found that the rhinoceros had the same amount of air in their lungs, and they breathed just as much when they were in the different way."

[Currentsitguy]

a 2nd (better) translation:
"Scientists wanted to know if hanging upside down would make it harder for a rhinoceros to breathe. Hanging upside down by its feet increased the rhinoceros's blood oxygen, but also increased its blood carbon dioxide. The scientists thought the rhinoceros would breathe faster while hanging upside down, but they found out that it didn't breathe any faster than when it was laying down. This means that the rhinoceros' body is doing a good job of keeping its blood oxygen and blood carbon dioxide at the right levels."

[Cal Cetín]

The original version makes it sound less like some kind of fraternity prank.

[Cal Cetín]

How do you hang a rhinoceros upside down?

Very carefully!

[bernard11]

And what produced this? (The software is responsible for the cutoff.)

"Once upon a time, a boy named Jack was walking in the woods. He came upon a tree. And he saw a strange creature. It looked like a cross between a dragon and a lobster. It had giant claws, and big red eyes, and sharp teeth. And it was chasing a bunch of creatures that looked like lizards. The lizards were running away. And they were screaming as they ran:“Help! Help! Help!”Jack took out his sword, and he stabbed the creature right in the middle. He killed it, and he took its head home with him as a trophy. He showed it to his mother, and she said:“Oh my! You killed"

[mse326]

Is that Jabberwocky?

[santamonica811]

At first I thought so. But the original makes it clear that the parent is the father. ("He chortled in his joy.") On the other hand; maybe a mere pronoun is trumped by the 'mome raths' . . . which certain sounds like "mom."

[bernard11]

Yes. Jabberwocky.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Now I'm wondering what would happen if you ran sovereign citizen nonsense through it, but I don't have any samples handy.

[Life of Brian]

"A long time ago, our fathers brought the U.S.A. into existence. We are now at war with the South over whether this country should continue to exist. We have come here to honor the people who died for this country to exist. We can't make this ground special. The brave men who died here have made it special. The world won't remember what we say here, but it will never forget what they did here. It's up to us to keep going with the cause for which they died, so that this country will never die."

Not bad....

[Life of Brian]

Ok, the more I play around with this, the more it seems like the AI engine was fed way too much Millennial chucklehead chow. Behold how this at least moderately nuanced passage:

Community mask wearing substantially reduces transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in 2 ways. First, masks prevent infected persons from exposing others to SARS-CoV-2 by blocking exhalation of virus-containing droplets into the air (termed source control). This aspect of mask wearing is especially important because it is estimated that at least 50% or more of transmissions are from persons who never develop symptoms or those who are in the presymptomatic phase of COVID-19 illness.1 In recent laboratory experiments, multilayer cloth masks were more effective than single-layer masks, blocking as much as 50% to 70% of exhaled small droplets and particles.2,3 In some cases, cloth masks have performed similar to surgical or procedure masks for source control. Second, masks protect uninfected wearers. Masks form a barrier to large respiratory droplets that could land on exposed mucous membranes of the eye, nose, and mouth. Masks can also partially filter out small droplets and particles from inhaled air. Multiple layers of fabric and fabrics with higher thread counts improve filtration. However, the observed effectiveness of cloth masks to protect the wearer is lower than their effectiveness for source control,3 and the filtration capacity of cloth masks can be highly dependent on design, fit, and materials used. Standards for cloth masks are needed to help consumers select marketed products.

becomes:

SARS-CoV-2 can spread from one person to another. Cloth masks can stop people from making SARS-CoV-2 spread. If someone doesn't have a cloth mask, they can get SARS-CoV-2 from someone who has it. If someone wears a cloth mask, they can't spread SARS-CoV-2 to other people.

[Michael P]

The original asserts that make protect the wearer's eyes. How? I can understand a face shield doing that, but I don't recall any Covid-related mask that covers the eyes.

[Krayt]

I think, by blocking macroscopic fomates when you sneeze or cough, they can't fly into someone's eye.

That's the primary way sub N95 masks help, along with stopping you from touching your mouth or nose after feeling up that case of water in the supermarket someone maskless coughed nearby 10 minutes earlier.

[tkamenick]

Well, that is basically what I keep hearing from media and Democrats.

[Jimmy the Dane]

I copied in one of AK's comments and the response was odd, it was just:
Ignore.

[StellaLink_the dog]

How would it handle some Marx style rhetoric?
"Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas after having shot one in the trunk but before shooting one in the living room."

yields:
Last night I shot an elephant. It was in my pajamas, after I had shot one in the trunk, but before I shot one in the living room.

[Jerry B.]

The preamble to the constitution came out with no changes.

[Jerry B.]

Put, for example, the Second Amendment in and, after the first answer, hit the “try again” button a few times, you’ll get several different translations.

[MatthewSlyfield]

Bible KJV Genesis 1-1 to 1-5

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Everything was dark and empty. God said, "Let there be light!" And there was light. God saw that it was good.And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. The first day ended.

[ReaderY]

For the law review articles, the simplification is definitely an improvement over the current abstract language. It’s much clearer. It retains what’s needed to decide whether to read the article or not. What it discards doesn’t really serve any purpose except to make the author appear “smart” by throwing about big words.

[BillyG]

If you can simplify your argument, people will understand it easier. I don't care what grade level, three easier it is to understand the better. Making it complex only serves to hide information.

[Spencer]

“Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.” [Wizard of Oz

[santamonica811]

Sadly, the site is down right now (Sun evening, PST). The error message says that the site is for science papers. When it's up and running again, I'm interested to see what it does with this:

"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?"

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."

I mean; it's about Covid, so Trump's statement is kinda science-related.