Well, then. All of this would be of purely academic interest if it weren't for the fact that legal documents are part of the basic infrastructure of life. Isn't it odd that the most important events in our lives require slogging through language that almost nobody understands?

Think about it: getting married or divorced; buying or renting property; investing a nest egg; making a will; serving on a jury; declaring bankruptcy; taking out insurance; borrowing money; getting sued; undergoing surgery - each one of these transactions involves lengthy documents that we are expected to sign, usually without having had sufficient time to read them. Indeed, a person who insists on reading everything that he signs is regarded as a crank of the first order.

And yet, if you ask an educated person, he will often tell you, in self-satisfied tones, that he would never sign a document that he hadn't read. "Wouldn't dream of it," he'll say, perhaps tugging at his bow tie and straightening his horn rimmed glasses, "I won't agree to anything unless I have time to read it over."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don't believe this hypothetical educated person. Does he actually read every car rental contract in full? Does he pore over every agreement sent to him by a credit card company, and the warranty on every product that he buys? Does he read every software licensing agreement before clicking "I agree?" If the answer to all of these is "yes," then I daresay he also lines his hat with aluminum foil.

Consider the case of Justin Noe, a British motorist who was pulled over by the police in 1999 and asked to submit to a breathalyzer test. He agreed, but on the condition that he first be allowed to consult the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, that is, the very law that explains a citizen's rights when taking breathalyzer tests. A court later decided that Noe's request was so patently unreasonable as to amount to a refusal to submit to the test, the implication being that he was probably drunk. Clearly, anybody who asks to read a statute must be intoxicated.

When non-lawyers do manage to read legal documents, they typically end up more confused than they were before they started. Any language in which libel can mean either a disparaging remark or a lawsuit against a ship is obviously a disaster waiting to happen. In legalese, when you execute an agreement, you bring it into existence; but when you execute a person, you do just the opposite. A layman is often surprised to learn that only land and buildings count as real property, as though things like cars and furniture were somehow unreal property. Actually, the "real" in real property comes from the French word for royal, because all land used to be held by the king. There, doesn't that make you feel better?