ABSTRACT
The language of judges and lawyers might be notorious for being technical, laden with Latin and archaic, but the relationship between law and language is even more interesting and important than the relationship between other occupations and their languages or codes. The use of a language alien to over 95 per cent of the population certainly fuelled the observation by George Bernard Shaw that a profession is a conspiracy against lay people. Latin knowledge is still very useful for the interpretation of many old cases, in other words most of the law reports. In 2015 in Ohio, the Court of Appeals overturned a conviction because a comma mistakenly omitted from a local parking law meant that the code did not apply to most vehicles. Kings in England spoke French for centuries after the Norman Conquest in 1066, and more than 10,000 French words were absorbed into the language, including many legal words used at court.
