Юридический язык: терминология и синтаксис юридических документов

Interviews with professional lawyers, studies of legal documents using corpus analysis methods, and increasing public attention to the complexity and incomprehensibility of legal documents demonstrate that the problem of legal language has reached alarming proportions in recent years. This can be partly explained by the increasing complexity of legal regulation as the practice of applying legal norms accumulates, and the desire to reflect ever more nuances and details in legal texts. As a result, the syntax of legal documents, traditionally distinguished by increased structural complexity, is becoming a significant barrier to understanding such documents not only for ordinary citizens but often even for professional lawyers. The inherent desire for precision in law necessitates the use of specialized terms, some of which are borrowed from academic and professional vocabulary, which further complicates the comprehensibility of legal acts, especially now, in the context of constant societal development, the emergence of new social relations and social institutions, and the transformation of existing ones. The resulting unclear and vague content of regulatory acts reduces the effectiveness of legal regulation and creates risks of violating the constitutional principles of legal certainty and equality before the law and the courts. All these negative phenomena are observed in Russian law today and require attention from both academics and practitioners—primarily, rulemaking. Moderator: • Sergey Belov, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Head of the Department of Constitutional Law, Saint Petersburg State University Panelists: • Yuri Brisov, Partner, D&A Partners (online) • Anton Vasiliev, Director of the Law Institute, Head of the Department of Theory and History of State and Law, Altai State University • Yuri Ivanenko, Judge, Chairman of the Third Panel of Judges, Judicial Collegium for Economic Disputes, Supreme Court of the Russian Federation • Anastasia Leletina, Deputy Director of the Department of State Registration of Departmental Regulatory Legal Acts, Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation • Elena Mizulina, Member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building • Dmitry Petrov, Deputy Director General for Government Relations and Legal Issues, Tele2