ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two short extracts that examine common presumptions held about legal language. The extracts are the precision of legal language and the different senses of 'law as a profession of words'. The first extract, not inappropriately in view of the author's status as virtually founder of the modern study of legal language, comes from David Mellinkoff's The Language of Law. Mellinkoff's book consists of two main strands: a detailed historical description of legal English; and a critique of excesses associated with that variety and the need for reform. This extract is Mellinkoff s comment on the claim that, for all its oddities, legal English allows greater precision than alternative forms of expression. Second extract comes near the end of an influential article by Marianne Constable, Professor of Rhetoric at Berkeley, USA; the author reflects on a widely quoted expression with which Mellinkoff opened his book: that law is 'a profession of words'.
