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It’s Your Law Quotes
It’s Your Law
by
Charles P. Curtis0 ratings, 0.00 average rating, 0 reviews
It’s Your Law Quotes
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“I have shown that the theory I offer you is based on a natural virtue in words themselves. Let me state this theory of interpretation dogmatically before I turn the coin over to show that it conforms with the actual practices of draftsmanship.
Words in legal documents - I am not talking about anything else - are simply delegations to others of authority to apply them to particular things or occasions. The only meaning of the word meaning, as I am using it, is an application to the particular. And the more imprecise the words are, the greater is the delegation, simply because then they can be applied or not to more particulars. This is the only important feature of words in legal draftsmanship or interpretation.
They mean, therefore, not what their author intended them to mean, or even what meaning he intended, or expected, reasonably or not, others to give them. They mean, in the first instance, what the person to whom they are addressed makes them mean. Their meaning is whatever occasion or thing he may apply them to or what in some cases he may only propose to apply them to. The meaning of words in legal documents is to be sought, not in their author or authors, the parties to a contract, the testator, or the legislature, but in the acts or the behavior with which the person addressed undertakes to match them. This is the beginning of their meaning.
In the second instance, but only secondarily, a legal document is also addressed to the courts. This is a further delegation, and a delegation of a different authority, to decide, not what the word means, but whether the immediate addressee had authority to make them mean what he did make them mean, or what he proposes to make them mean. In other words, the question before the court is not whether he gave the words the right meaning, but whether or not the words authorized the meaning he gave them.”
― It’s Your Law
Words in legal documents - I am not talking about anything else - are simply delegations to others of authority to apply them to particular things or occasions. The only meaning of the word meaning, as I am using it, is an application to the particular. And the more imprecise the words are, the greater is the delegation, simply because then they can be applied or not to more particulars. This is the only important feature of words in legal draftsmanship or interpretation.
They mean, therefore, not what their author intended them to mean, or even what meaning he intended, or expected, reasonably or not, others to give them. They mean, in the first instance, what the person to whom they are addressed makes them mean. Their meaning is whatever occasion or thing he may apply them to or what in some cases he may only propose to apply them to. The meaning of words in legal documents is to be sought, not in their author or authors, the parties to a contract, the testator, or the legislature, but in the acts or the behavior with which the person addressed undertakes to match them. This is the beginning of their meaning.
In the second instance, but only secondarily, a legal document is also addressed to the courts. This is a further delegation, and a delegation of a different authority, to decide, not what the word means, but whether the immediate addressee had authority to make them mean what he did make them mean, or what he proposes to make them mean. In other words, the question before the court is not whether he gave the words the right meaning, but whether or not the words authorized the meaning he gave them.”
― It’s Your Law
