A legal doublet is a standardized phrase used frequently in English legal language consisting of two or more words that are irreversible binomials and frequently synonyms, usually connected by "and", such as "null and void". The order of the words cannot be reversed, as it would be seen as particularly unusual to ask someone to desist and cease or to have property owned clear and free, when these common legal phrases are universally known as cease and desist and free and clear.
The doubling—and sometimes even tripling—often originates in the transition from use of one language for legal purposes to another: in Britain, from a native English term to a Latin or Law French term; in Romance-speaking countries, from Latin to the vernacular. To ensure understanding, the terms from both languages were used. This reflected the interactions between Germanic and Roman law following the decline of the Roman Empire. These phrases are often pleonasms[1] and form irreversible binomials.
In other cases the two components have differences which are subtle, appreciable only to lawyers, or obsolete. For example, ways and means, referring to methods and resources respectively,[2] are differentiable, in the same way that tools and materials, or equipment and funds, are differentiable—but the difference between them is often practically irrelevant to the contexts in which the irreversible binomial ways and means is used today in non-legal contexts as a mere cliché.
Doublets may also have arisen or persisted because the solicitors and clerks who drew up conveyances and other documents were paid by the word, which tended to encourage verbosity.[3]
Their habitual use has been decried by some legal scholars as superfluous in modern legal briefs.[1]
- ^ a b Espenschied, Lenné Eidson (2010). "10.1 Eliminate clutter and redundant language § Eliminate common doublets and triplets". Contract Drafting: Powerful Prose in Transactional Practice. ABA Fundamentals. Chicago: American Bar Association. pp. 164–165. ISBN 978-1-60442-795-0. LCCN 2010003298. OCLC 505017586. OL 15443452W.
- ^ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, archived from the original on 2015-09-25, retrieved 2018-02-02.
- ^ English, Barbara; Saville, John (1983). Strict Settlement: a guide for historians. Hull: University of Hull Press. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-85958-439-9.