Der Nutzen wissenschaftlicher Verfahren zur Verbesserung der Verständlichkeit von normativen Texten: Überblick, ausgewählte Beispiele, Diskussion

Abstract

The current research that aims at an improvement of the comprehensibility of law texts should be inspected critically from both the content level and the level of scientific methods. Ultimately, the comprehensibility of a law text is always defined in dependence of the concrete reader. The use of models that are not interaction oriented for drawing conclusions about the comprehensibility of law texts is questionable. The interaction-oriented framework is only exceptionally used in research that aims at an improvement of the comprehensibility of law texts. Only few empirical studies have taken into account that there is a relation between reader and text. Due to their design they are situated on the border between comprehensibility and understanding research. In principle, empirical interaction-oriented studies allow for controlling text and reader factors that might play a crucial role when drawing conclusions about the comprehensibility of law texts and the improvement of this comprehensibility. An analysis based on methodological considerations will come to the conclusion that, on the one hand, an improvement strategy can be developed based on empirical studies and, on the second hand, that the comprehensibility gain reached so far is expandable. Many interaction oriented approaches feature only sub optimal experimental design and methodological practice. At present, the use of the current research situation for optimising the comprehensibility of the law via text or another medium is questionable. However, since the comprehensibility of a law is always dependent on actual readers and writers these readers and writers can actively modulate the comprehensibility effectively — both on the production and the perception level. Empirical evidence for the comprehensibility should, however, always be adapted to the complexity of the subject matter so that this evidence can be of theoretical and practical value (e.g., gain of insight, improvement of comprehensibility, legal security).