Sometimes we have those little epiphanies in the shower.. sometimes they come from other places. This is a home for those epiphanies.
I've judged engineering competitions. A lot of the rules can seem to be needlessly complicated, especially to non-engineers. Every competition has usually required amending the rules for next year because several teams bent the rules to win.
I imagine the law is like that but worse.
Formula 1 in a nutshell
It's not that it's made that way, but it really difficult to write airtight documents. There are always people who want to head to a grey area and claim that allows them to do whatever they want. So legislation gets pretty verbose about limitations and exceptions. There is still grey area so there are regulations that interpret the law. And of course there is litigation that further defines what is and is not allowed. So poor little citizens like us can see a plain reading of a law, but still need to find regulations and any associated case law to see how it is actually interpreted and what it currently means.
It's not written to confuse, but it is very comprehensive to try to limit wiggle room.
That law has to be complicated because life is complicated. That's why reasonable countries will provide you with a free lawyer.
They will provide you with a free lawyer if you are defending yourself from a crime you've been convicted of, otherwise you are on your own. For example I was sold a house that is on a septic tank and that was never disclosed to me upon purchasing. It is now on me to source and pay for a lawyer to sue the guy who sold me the house, especially since said septic system doesn't work and is backing up. Part of the suit is to cover my legal fees, but i actually have to win to get that covered.
Its written to be applicable to specific situations. There are a LOT of possible specific situations.
The complexity isn't a scam, but the legal profession is dead now that you can just @ the president on twitter and he will make sure you don't get in trouble for being a sex pest
Basically everything in the real world is so complicated, you have to hire specialists to get it right. I mean even fixing the plumbing or wiring in your house, you'd regularly hire some professional. You can try, but it requires some expertise, or it might leak or catch on fire. Same with fighting companies or the state in front of a court.
Home repairs like that are clear and researched enough that you could reasonably do them yourself with the right resources and effort. Average folks can look up and understand most building codes because the language is clear, concise and specific, whereas legal language is much more nuanced and broad. Previous court cases are often used to determine what the law should be interpreted as where as you don't need to go measure your neighbors house to get the right stud spacing. The plumbing code is not as debatable as what constitutes as manslaughter.
Though, back in the day my grandpa would solder the piping. And these days they're all press-fit with some kinds of guns. Which aren't tools you have in your garage. I heard it's easy to do. But I rarely see people do it themselves.
I guess with the language, it depends a bit where kind of background people have. I'd agree there is a big difference. Sometimes in legalese, you also have to look up definitions. A word might be defined in a different paragraph. Otherwise it'll get defined by some prior court rulings. Which isn't ideal. Legislative also makes an effort. They'll deliberately choose to make something more vague or more precise, depending on what it's supposed to do. But yeah, it kinda needs to be clear (in theory) because we need people to be able to understand and follow law in the first place. Plus courts shouldn't just do caprice. They should be able to tell what it's supposed to mean.
And you kind of need to be aware of prior rulings, notes by other courts. Especially in common law countries. But also in all the others.
I think it's not fundamentally different to other kinds of specialized jargon. I in computer science also have to deal with words which have special meanings. And weird sounding specifications, because they need to be airtight.
For modern pex plumbing, there are a few different techniques but the easiest for a home owner would be using metal crimp rings and a hand crimp tool which runs about $100. Thats probably the same or less than the hourly rate of a plumber. Plus with modern plumbing measuring doesn't need to be as precise and you can literally just bend the pex to make awkward angles. Even easier than that are push fit fittings. No special tools required but each fitting is more expensive than traditional pex fittings. The biggest benfit of push fit fittings is they can join different types of pipe together, such as copper to pex.
The most important parts of the plumbing code are related to drains, this is to ensure proper drainage and to prevent backflows of sewage into the potable plumbing or accumulation of sewer gases inside the home.
Each industry will have its own jargon, and most industries can be well researched, but as you mentioned when it comes to legal stuff it can be region specific and may extensively rely on previous court rulings. Thats where a good lawyer really makes the difference.
A good plumber and a bad plumber can both replace your sink, the good plumber will likely be cleaner and neater, maybe make it easier to replace again, but both should get the job done. A good programmer could code something to be much more effecient than a bad programmer. A good lawyer versus a bad lawyer could have a much more significant difference in their outcomes.
I wonder if Roman currency and units of measurement were intentionally so bad. For a very long time, UK had a similarity complicated system, and switching to decimal money was pretty radical.
Fun fact!
The £/s/d system comes from Charlemagne in the 8th century to unify currency in his Frankish empire, not Roman times! A Carolingian pound of pure silver (libra/pfund, about 408g) was divided in 20 shillings (solidus/schilling), themselves divided into 12 pennies (denarius/pfenning). Only pfennings were actually minted, the other two were accounting units.
If I recall correctly, all of these convoluted units still trace back to the Roman Empire. Sure, the UK didn’t get it directly from Rome, but the connection is still there. The Romans invented this mess, and other countries just inherited it.