There are a number of possible explanations for this trend. The population of judges decreases with the extension of the term of office, as judges eventually leave the Court. Judges with more complex writing styles could also serve longer in court. Alternatively, sitting in the field could change the writing style, leading to an increase in average SMOG over time. This could happen if the judge feels more comfortable on the bench and less focused on writing tight, specific prose. On the other hand, as the years pass and the judge writes more and more opinions and perhaps develops strong opinions in certain areas of law, his writing style may become more elaborate as he deals with these issues and discusses legal developments. Drafting is the channel through which courts interact with the public.1 Therefore, the quality of legal drafting is an important part of the legal system – it determines the clarity of the rules we follow. Empirically, however, we know relatively little about this. The knee-jerk reaction of a judicial observer might be that legal drafting suffers from excessive complexity. Indeed, the Federal Judicial Centre believes it is necessary to encourage judges to avoid eloquence, pomp and overly complex language.2 However, we do not know to what extent judges follow this advice or whether the quality of legal writing has changed over time. There seems to be a slight but significant relationship between ideology and SMOG.

This even exists in a multivariate model that controls for the length of opinion, the division of the vote, and the legal issue being dealt with,22 suggesting that the opinions on the conservative side of the Martin Quinn spectrum are a little harder to read than those on the Liberal side. The term Gobbledygook was coined in 1944 by Texas lawyer Maury Maverick, who expressed contempt for the “gibberish language” of his colleagues. The word was inspired by the turkey, “always dizzyingly devouring and strutting around with ridiculous pomp.” This may sound like theoretical gibberish, but it has real implications for what happens next. [Campus Progress] In its original definition, gibberish is synonymous with jargon, duplicity and wording, as in these cases: in legal drafting, readability can have an optimal level. High SMOG scores aren`t necessarily a bad thing. Although Justice Scalia has the highest SMOG score and above-average average readability, suggesting that his opinions are not easy to read, he is known for his strong and distinctive writing style and has written extensively on effective legal communication.23 Understandable language improves the conveyance of the message to be conveyed. The separation and deficiencies of contracts and other legal documents caused by overly complex and ambiguous wording often become evident when a claim is brought by an aggrieved party. In such cases, the overly complicated wording of the contract not only makes it difficult to understand the agreement, but also makes it difficult to implement the contract. Future work could adopt these methods to examine the writing styles of other lawyers. It is questionable whether clarity in writing style is correlated with the likelihood that a judge will be promoted, or that a lawyer will win cases or become a partner.

The white paper is so riddled with meaningless gibberish and vague about the evolution of China`s legal system that one can only wonder what the intention was to publish it. [ ] Id., p. 641. On the impact of computers on the practice of law, see generally Richard L. Marcus, The Impact of Computers on the Legal Profession: Evolution or Revolution?, 102 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1827 (2008), which assesses the significant changes that computer technology has brought to the legal profession. In a common least squares model with SMOG as the dependent variable, including the conditions for controlling the legal question, the number of words in the opinion, and whether the vote was split, a 1-point increase in Martin-Quinn scores corresponds to a 0.96 increase on the SMOG scale.

Legal data were extracted using the “Issue Area” variable in the Supreme Court database. Spaeth et al., op. cit. Cit. Footnote 16. Like gibberish, gibberish is essentially meaningless to the person who hears or reads it. What distinguishes gibberish is that it contains technical terms or exaggerated and complicated words that are not necessary.