US law codes, the official compilation of federal laws, are notorious for being complex. A recent study offers insights into why law codes are so difficult to understand—and why that may not be a good thing.
Schoolhouse Rock’s song “I’m Just a Bill” makes laws seem simple and even straightforward; however, the bill on Capitol Hill never explained how difficult it can be to understand written laws once they pass. Reading US law codes can be incredibly tedious, so Professors Brett Hashimoto (Corpus Linguistics), Earl Brown (Language Variation), and BYU grad Catherine Marshall (Linguistics MA ’24) set out to understand why legal language is so complex—and how that hurts the US justice system.
Understanding Federal Law
Hashimoto compares statutory law to rules for a board game: “Statutes are essentially the laws that Congress passes, and they dictate what behaviors are allowable and not allowable.” Unlike Monopoly or Catan, “if you don’t understand the rules, you don’t just lose a round of a game; you go to prison or have to pay a fine.”
Despite the severity of breaking federal law, Hashimoto notes that most statutory language makes understanding the law very difficult. The research team created their study with this conflict in mind.
They first set out to pinpoint what makes statutory law different by looking at three principles of lexical complexity: sophistication (the number of uncommon words used), diversity (the variety of words used), and density (the proportion of content words and nouns to overall words). Initially, the team hypothesized that statutory language would be higher than the other registers in all three categories, but their research proved different.
Their analysis of the federal laws showed that, as expected, statutory language is high in sophistication and density. “But what we found is actually the opposite for diversity,” Hashimoto says. “It was the lowest or least diverse of any register.” Though unexpected, he can now see patterns of this in dozens of federal laws and believes that word and phrase repetition make law codes particularly difficult to understand.
The Problems with Complexity
Hashimoto explains that complexity in written laws makes it difficult for ordinary people to interact with the law without the help of an attorney. “It just so happens that lawyers aren’t cheap, and so we’ve created this system where if you are wealthy, you can hire somebody to understand the legal system, and if you’re not, then you don’t have that luxury.”
According to Hashimoto, understanding language complexity is the first step in making laws accessible to the average American. “If [laws] weren’t so scary, then people couldn’t use the law to take advantage of other people,” he says. “If [law] wasn’t mysterious, I think—I hope—that society as a whole would function better.”
Undergraduate Opportunities in Legal Linguistics
Hashimoto plans to share this research—and that of other scholars in the field of legal linguistics—with students in the Linguistic Department’s newest course, “Forensic and Legal Linguistics,” which will be offered once a year starting fall 2025. In doing so, he aims to encourage another generation of scholars to think about the benefits and setbacks to modern trends in statutory language and, hopefully, to initiate changes to the language of the legal system. The team’s work will also be published fall 2025 in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, where it can be examined by a broader audience of linguists.
He encourages students with interest in legal linguistics to join his class or upcoming research projects to learn more about the role language plays in the US justice system. “Eventually, it would be great if legal language wasn’t scary for the average person to read,” Hashimoto says.
In time, he hopes research on the complexity of statutory language can help linguists and lawmakers consider ways to simplify statutory language so “it’s not this mystical, mythical process” and can instead offer “more fair and just outcomes for the average citizen.”
Learn more about Hashimoto’s legal linguistics course and research projects.
Learn about and register for BYU’s 10th Annual Law & Corpus Linguistics Conference here.