Publié en 2007, cet ouvrage porte un regard amusé mais néanmoins éclairé - et éclairant - sur le langage du droit. L'auteur y aborde notamment la question du nom des lois, du Plain English, ou encore la terminologie des délits sexuels dans un chapitre qui prend tout son sens à la lumière de l'actualité. Extrait :
"Perhaps the best thing about the language of sex laws is how well it illustrates that the laws themselves are completely, almost charmingly, disconnected from the facts of modern life. Take marital infidelity. While sophisticated types like to brush it off ("it meant nothing"), the law retains a Dickensian lexicon to describe the dire consequences of this all-too-common indiscretion. If a married person sleeps with an unmarried person, for example, only the former commits the crime of adultery, while the latter commits fornication and possibly solicitation of chastity, which is the crime of asking another person to commit adultery or fornication. The wronged spouse, meanwhile, not only has the right to sue the cheating spouse for divorce, but can also sue the interloper under the torts of criminal conversation and alienation of affection. Each of these legal concepts still has some claim to validity in one part of America or another".
L'auteur a également créé un blog pour accompagner la sortie de son livre, qui porte le même nom que celui-ci (http://thepartyofthefirstpart.blogspot.com/). Ce blog ne semble pas alimenté très régulièrement mais on y trouvera des rubriques très intéressantes (Legal Lingo columns, Plain English vs. Precision, etc.) qui rassemblent d'anciens billets.
Adam Freedman, The Party of the First Part, Henry Holt, 234 pages, 2007.
"Perhaps the best thing about the language of sex laws is how well it illustrates that the laws themselves are completely, almost charmingly, disconnected from the facts of modern life. Take marital infidelity. While sophisticated types like to brush it off ("it meant nothing"), the law retains a Dickensian lexicon to describe the dire consequences of this all-too-common indiscretion. If a married person sleeps with an unmarried person, for example, only the former commits the crime of adultery, while the latter commits fornication and possibly solicitation of chastity, which is the crime of asking another person to commit adultery or fornication. The wronged spouse, meanwhile, not only has the right to sue the cheating spouse for divorce, but can also sue the interloper under the torts of criminal conversation and alienation of affection. Each of these legal concepts still has some claim to validity in one part of America or another".
L'auteur a également créé un blog pour accompagner la sortie de son livre, qui porte le même nom que celui-ci (http://thepartyofthefirstpart.blogspot.com/). Ce blog ne semble pas alimenté très régulièrement mais on y trouvera des rubriques très intéressantes (Legal Lingo columns, Plain English vs. Precision, etc.) qui rassemblent d'anciens billets.
Adam Freedman, The Party of the First Part, Henry Holt, 234 pages, 2007.
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