Yonathan A Arbel, ‘The Readability of Contracts: Big Data Analysis’, 21 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (forthcoming, 2024), available at SSRN (January 1, 2023). Probably all law professors, even textualists, have experienced frustrations with overly rigid applications of supposed rules about language. For example, they’ve encountered editors who require that all contractions be spelled out or replace every instance of the word ‘like’ with ‘such as’ regardless of whether the substitution makes sense in context. Editing like that serves formalistic assumptions about the readability and professionalism of text and usually rests on various ‘myths’ or outdated conceptions about language. Similarly, many professors, even formalists, have encountered and been frustrated by institutional ‘metrics’ that reduce rich, substantive endeavors (like education) to rigid and formalistic abstractions (‘learning outcomes’ or test scores) … (more)
[Shawn Bayern, JOTWELL, 18 November 2024]
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