Member-only story
An Appalling Lack of Rights: From Inanlienable, to meritorious, to “Yeah, but…”
The ideal of “inalienable rights” has too often been changed to “meritorious rights” by flawed people adding “they have rights, but…”
In beautiful language, the Declaration of Independence asserts our inalienable rights, endowed not earned, encompassing the basics of life. The highest of ideals for a free people to self-govern based on those same rights.
Legalese, the specialized discourse of lawyers, is less elegant, and has an innate ability to overcomplicate the simple and bury the obvious in layers of technicality. It is a term for the wordy, sometimes veering into Latin language lawyers use to practice law and confound the laity. It is not hyperbole to say the global phenomenon of legal English runs the world. International business, the United States, the European Union, and vast swaths of the world use it for the most important of decisions, documents, laws, and business transactions.
Which makes the arrangement of words and numbers in the criminal complaint against Derek Chauvin all the more brutal, unflinching, and searing. We see painfully plain language used:
The defendant had his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for 8…
