Legal English, for instance, the kind of English employed in a legal statute, is typically used in mainly English speaking countries including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia. However, the legal terminology typically used in the United States today for a legal statute is based upon French and Latin phrases. In fact, as written, legal English is usually devoid of punctuation. This stems from a long held belief that punctuation is not crucial to understanding the legislative intent of a legal statute.
Because the legal English with which a legal statute is written relies upon French grammatical structure, the language is quite challenging for the lay person to comprehend and decode. However, if one does legislative research on statuatory history, it becomes easier to understand the legal English of a legal statute. Legal research can be taken care of in law libraries, or by taking advantage of an online university database that includes a number of legal articles.
In doing law research, one realizes that a legal statute can be codified along state or federal guidelines. However, statuatory law is under the thumb, so to speak, of constitutional law. Statuatory law is organized by subject matter. This organizational designation is known as codified law. The entire makeup of a legal statute is known as a code. These are the kinds of interesting things you learn as you conduct legal research.
