Aspects of Legislative Drafting: Some South African Realities (or Plain Language Is Not Always Plain Sailing)

Abstract

It seems to me that a sort of hieratic language has developed by which the priests incant the commandments. I seem to see the ordinary citizen today standing before the law like the laity in a medieval church: at the far end the lights glow, the priestly figures move to and fro, but it is in an unknown tongue that the great mysteries of right and wrong are proclaimed.