Friday, February 27, 2015

Barbarous Terms, Ill Explained

Edmund Burke (credit)
From Edmund Burke, who entered Middle Temple in 1749, via David Bromwich, Alan Ryan and the New York Review of Books, here is a challenge to all would-be authors of legal treatises:
The study of our jurisprudence presented to the liberal and well-educated minds, even in the best Authors, hardly any thing but barbarous terms ill explained. . . .  Young men were sent away with an incurable, and if we regard the manner of handling rather than the substance, a very well-founded disgust.