English and Legalese, while related, are not the same language.
There has been some discussion about the charge of "use of a weapon of mass destruction" against the surviving Brother Kablamazov.
In this case, it is a term of art and is defined in the U.S. Code.
Laws
are about things and/or actions. In order to legislate against a thing or action, you must first define
exactly what the thing or action is that you wish to legislate against. This is why the
copy of Indiana Criminal Code at my elbow contains definitions of
everything from "store" ("a place of business where property or service
with respect to property is displayed, rented, sold, or offered for
sale") to "sexually violent predator defendant" (see IC 35-33-8-3.5(b))
(Note
that these are Indiana's definitions, and "store" might mean something
completely different in your state of residence or to the federal
government.)
This is how, just to give some examples, for the
purposes of a law, a piece of sheet metal the size of your pinkie nail
is a "machine gun", an aluminum forging with holes broached in it is a
"firearm", and a semiautomatic rifle is an "assault weapon".
I remember reading an article, I think on Reason, a year or two back about how the WMD term of art was expanded to include pipe bombs and various other types of attacks.
ReplyDeleteAccording to this article, which I haven't been able to find again, the bill that changed the definition was passed really quickly right after Saddam was captured, while everyone's attention was on that particular news story.
The law is written like it is to make sure that random bombings are federal crimes, even if you bomb is a really small and cheesy one. Incompetent terrorists need fed love, too.
ReplyDeleteLike Ken at Popehat, I am sure that agents of my government would NEVER misapply it in a fit of zealousness against someone who didn't really... OUCH! Thorry, my thongue jutht poked righth through my cheek.
Then you have Militarese, where "WMD" is term of art going back at least to the 80's, basically being a replacement buzzword for "ABC" (Atomic, Biological and Chemical) and NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical).
ReplyDeleteIn that world you could stack enough H6 or Tritonal filled bombs, or ANFO for that matter to fill Wrigley field and it would still not count as a WMD.
Such differences have at times made coordination between .mil and .gov much more problematic than such minor differences as working with, say, the ROK on language and cultural issues.
Many years ago I took chips of dry ice off the bubbling lump in the "smoking" Halloween cauldron on my front porch, closed them up in empty 2 liter soda bottles, tossed said bottles in my yard in the dark, and watched the excitement as they exploded LOUDLY but harmlessly 50 feet from the kids Trick-or-Treating.
ReplyDeleteWhile I hope statute of limitations has expired, is this really a felony misuse of a WMD?
mikee,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think?
Remember that for three years it was the law of the land (BATFE decision) that a shoelace was a machine gun. Reference Then they had the sense (shock!) to say the shoelace had to be used with a semiautomatic rifle.
ReplyDeleteIt seems the only use for such laws is to have more to charge someone with, hoping at least something sticks.
SiGraybeard,
ReplyDeleteA specific shoelace. It even had a number.
You are trying to think about this like an engineer, and it's not an engineering problem. You can't plug [ "ability" + "intent" / "intent" = ] and expect it to spit out 3.141...
...and more's the pity, too.
Anyone who's ever been subjected to Aunt Maisie's rhubarb casserole, or eaten USGI green eggs & ham out of an aluminum vat field mess can, has no trouble seeing how a pressure cooker can be considered a WMD.
ReplyDeleteTam, you've hit multiple nails square on the head with this one. It's ALWAYS about writing legalese generically enough to drive three semis abreast through it just to make sure they can 'catch' whomever they want in the net... Even if that particular net hasn't been invented yet...
ReplyDeleteI can't decide whether to be sad about living in a world where the word "store" requires an explicit definition in the statute books, or relieved about living in a state that, given said requirement, at least used a definition that matches pretty well with the common English meaning of the word "store".
ReplyDeleteLegalese is only related to English in the same manner that decoys and ducks are related. They look just enough like the real thing to get you into trouble.
ReplyDeleteA grenade is, according to the US military, a small arms weapon, while according to US law, it's a weapon of mass destruction.
ReplyDeleteRemember that definitions within a law are inserted by staff so the cretins voting the Partei line can leave plenty of loopholes for Partei bundlers. Something Congress abandoned with Pelosi's "we will have to pass it to find out what's in it."
ReplyDeleteWhich is, at bottom, as reasonable as ATF's decision to label legal Sport Utility Rifles as "machine guns." Complete with an M-16 icon.
Stranger
English is a concise, complete method for communication.
ReplyDeleteLegalize, is a tangled pile of braided horse crap mistaken for relevancy.
Better we should have less definitions, then, right? Laws that prohobit driving "too fast", or doing things that are "violent", or a tax code that you have to pay your "fair share".
ReplyDelete/s
Tyranny loves vague laws.
I am all in favor of precise definitions; they are required for anything even remotely resembling the "Rule of Law" to occur.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite line from wkrp in cincinnati -
ReplyDelete"We are not talking about the truth here. We are talking about the law!"
And then you have the vulgate bibles, according to the medieval Catholic church, weapons of Mass destruction.
ReplyDeleteSo, lemme git this strait.
ReplyDeleteTwo doofus' (doofii?) pack the fun powder they extracted from fireworks into a pressure cooker and it's a WMD.
BUT, Bush lied when he said that Iraq had WMDs.
Well thank dog the Iraquis never thought of using firework fun powder with pressure cookers for all those IEDs over there or some of our guys might have gotten hurt.
Sounds like someone is being very selective with there definitions.
s
Stuart,
ReplyDeleteThat's not how it works.
Jess: legaleze is the way that it is because it allows folks that speak it to know exactly how a particular law or a particular contract is going to be interpreted by a competent judge.
ReplyDeleteIt's jargon. Very precise jargon.
Jess --
ReplyDeleteThe problem is words mean stuff, but when your average word in English has multiple (sometimes contradictory) meanings, and even words with uncontested "general" meanings are interpreted differenlt (albeit equally validly) by differing informed users,* which meaning applies to the statute?
In fact, the same term often means different things in different statutes. Which is why the opening section in each chunk of code is full of definitions specific to THAT code section - and why "firearm" means one thing in Title I (GCA) and another in Title II (NFA).
* For example, the technical terms "warning and disabling fire" and "prosecuting the target" have very different meanings to a group of Coast Guard officers and a group of Navy Surface Warfare officers. Thats why the terms are carefully defined in each organization's documentation.
Stuart the Viking said: Two doofus' (doofii?) pack the fun powder they extracted from fireworks into a pressure cooker and it's a WMD.
ReplyDeleteBUT, Bush lied when he said that Iraq had WMDs.
Problem: Different contexts. Terms of art are (axiomatically) not universal.
"Weapon of Mass Destruction" in the one context is unrelated in meaning to the other context.
This simply isn't a big deal.
(Honestly, my big complaint with their formulation of "Bush lied" is that he never god-damn lied.
Oh, he was dead wrong, but even the (Democrat-run and this not ass-covering for him) Robb-Silberman Commission couldn't pin a lie on him, because everything he said on the subject was based on real intel from the CIA and our allies.
"Being Wrong" and "Lying" aren't the same thing...)
Without precision in language, however hard that is to define (sorry) and achieve, we are at the mercy of a law based on "I know it when I see it," which is like being raised by a bipolar mother (Is this ok to do today?).
ReplyDeleteAs for ambiguity in language, there is a joke running around on the internet about what "Secure the building" means to each of the various branches of the US Armed Forces (The Air Force will lease a building, The Navy will lock all the doors and windows, and the Marines will kill everyone inside, blow out all the windows and post a guard until the Army can arrive).