Monday, July 1, 2013

Kerber's efforts at making legalese clear



I wonder if others would agree with me… Kerber does a pretty good job overall of explaining legalese, understanding that legalese is intended to complicate jurisprudence by broadening its application… I think. However, sometimes one has to work a little at understanding her explanation of the impact of the courts’ decisions. For example, on pp. 133-134, I had to read several times her explanation of the bottom-line effects of the 1879 Strauder case on women’s “right” to have women jurors. I did get it (I think) by her stating that “The concept of obligation was repeatedly confused with claims of rights.”  So, when she writes that “neither the courts nor the liberal community was prepared to concede that the continued exclusion of women from jury service was a mark of deep prejudice against women,” I took it to mean that while the courts (state) continued to use Strauder to buttress their argument that Strauder , viz. an obligation, could not be used by women for more women jurors because women had a ‘prior’ “right” of voluntary exclusion, the liberal community found in Strauder, viz. women’s “rights,”  the legal precedent that jury pools could not be constructed (by the state) with a lack of women, i.e., that women had a “right” for a larger jury pool of women.

1 comment:

  1. Personally I find legalese unbearable and I don't actually think she simplified it enough. From the get-go I found myself practically drawing a chart to figure out the Anna Martin case, which made me nervous for the rest. The Strauder case wasn't the only one that I had to reread several times to understand her explanation of a case's impact. But I'm also completely illiterate in legalese.

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