Plain Language in The Legal Field

Abstract

The concern with simplifying legal language in Brazil, as illustrated by the National Judiciary Pact for Plain Language, published by the National Council of Justice (CNJ) in November 2023, is based on ensuring access to justice. The publication of this Pact motivated the research for this article, which focuses on investigating the approach to simplifying legal language in laws, i.e., in the legal sphere, as opposed to the academic sphere. The movement for simplification of legal language in Brazil is in line with the Plain English Movement, which began in the United States in the 1970s. In addition to the National Judicial Pact for Plain Language, this article discusses CNJ Recommendation No. 144 as of 2023 and Complementary Law 95 as of 1998. Despite the difference between argumentative writing and normative writing, whose concepts are addressed in this article, some principles in the specific rules of legislative writing can be applied to texts that make up argumentative writing, considering the current academic discourse on the simplification of legal language in Brazil. Regarding methodological procedures, once the corpus of legal texts was selected, one searched for convergences between these texts and then analyzed each of their parts, focusing on drafting rules in consideration of access to justice. It was concluded that, although Complementary Law 95/98 belongs to the normative wording, it contains, in relation to the Recommendation and the Covenant mentioned, clearer rules of wording that can be applied to the simplification of legal language.