recognise structure such as these makes it easy for the reader to retrieve
information.
Legal Structures
There are some specifically legal structures. These actually involve deploying
models for working with law. There is a simple reason for this. Legal writing in
its purest form involves writing up how one has performed some legal task.
These tasks are explained by various models. While these models initially
furnish the method for actually performing the task, they also furnish the
overall structure for writing up and explaining how the task was performed.
This transformation rests on the method for performing the task becoming the
structure for explaining the task.
The major models consist of the model for organising law, the model for
forming law and the model for using law.
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These provide the overall structure
for most forms of legal writing in its purest form. Therefore, using one or
more of these structures will ensure that legal writing is properly structured and
to this extent easy to read. It is as simple as that.
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These models are explained in the next chapter but can be simply illustrated
for purposes here.
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First, in many types of legal writing, for example a
textbook, an article or a judgment, it is necessary to describe a legal rule. The
only sure way to do this properly is by reference to the model for organising
law, which divides the rule into elements and consequences, with elements
being divided into various levels of subelements. Any further description of a
rule should proceed element by element and subelement by subelement.
Second, much legal writing, for example an article or a judgment on a question
of law, describes how law is or should be interpreted. To structure this type of
text properly it is necessary to utilise the model for interpreting law. This
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Chapter 4 Legal Structure of a Text
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Legal writing, most noticeably judgments and textbooks, is notoriously
hard to read. It is also obvious that most legal writing lacks a coherent structure.
Since having a structure, especially an overall structure, is the most important part
of legal writing it is quite likely that lack of structure has been the major factor in
making so much of legal writing unreadable. If this surmise is correct, then use of
these models for working with law could be a major part of the cure for this defect
in legal writing. The reasoning here is as follows. Writing law is largely writing
up what one has done with law. If there is not any method for doing the task, there
is not structure for writing it up. Conversely, once you develop a method you
have a structure.
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Chapter 4 Legal Structure of a Text
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