Legal Term for Passive Agreement

The use of active voice is not an absolute principle that must be followed constantly. You may find that responsibilities can make a sentence less hostile or are necessary if you don`t know who the sentence is about. Brief review: The passive is based on a verb (the most common was, was and was) plus a verb in the past tense (technically past participle). All of the following are passive (verb and verb passed in italics): So the passive is not wrong; It has legitimate uses in legal drafting. It is overused (passive) by lawyers. Lawyers abuse it (actively). So when editing your writing, check passive vocal constructs – maybe you`re looking for what you have and were. When you discover the liabilities, ask yourself, „Do I need the liabilities here?” If you don`t, the active voice will become louder and more concise. Many lawyers are addicted to liabilities and have to break their addiction. It`s often not their fault.

Speakers, professors, judges, seasoned lawyers often all write passively and simply follow established practice. Many lawyers think that liabilities simply seem more legal. International experts in simple legal language (such as Bryan A. Garner) from many countries have written extensively on this principle and everyone agrees. By the way, a phrase like The Statute is applicable might not be desirable (I would prefer the Statute to apply), but it is not passive. Yes, it has a verb to be (is), but no verb is applicable. Bryan A. Garner has a smart rule to help you recognize if there`s a liability in your writing: „If you see a verb being followed by a past verb, you have a passive vocal construction.” This rule can save you processing time. Let`s look at some more passive demands: The passive is frequently censored and widely condemned. Why does the passive voice get so much bad press? Whoops.

Why does the passive have so bad press? The first is in the liabilities and offers the provider much greater protection. But only use the passive when you have to. You shouldn`t need more than about 5% of your rates. But what about legal documents? Are they different? No, they are not. Consider these two phrases: Passive consent is when a user gives consent (most likely to a website using cookies) without performing a clear action, such as clicking a button. Opt-out consent is often collected through means such as website banners, where a user`s continued use of the website constitutes consent. Each of these demands has a clear perspective that is put forward. Police demands will always have a clear and direct opinion about what should happen and what should change. When we look at political demands, we usually talk about two different persuasive goals: passive consent and immediate action. Now we can explain the bad press. If we abuse the passive voice in legal writing, we produce boring prose in two ways: we deprive the writing of creators, actors, plots. Things just happen – no one does.

Or we call the manufacturers, but they are attached to the end – something was done by someone. It is wordy. „Liabilities create two problems. It uses more words than the active voice, and there is a risk of creating ambiguity. 2 However, it is impossible to respond absolutely to many factual allegations. Some factual claims are simply difficult to determine because the definitive answer on the subject has not been discovered (e.g., when is censorship good, what rights should animals have, when does life begin). Perhaps the most interesting and historically consistent factual assertion is the existence of a higher power, God, or other religious deity. The simple fact is that there is not enough evidence to respond unequivocally to this factual claim in a particular direction, and here the concept of faith must be included in this factual statement. For example, you may be trying to convince your class that even though therapeutic massages are often performed on naked clients, it is not a form of prostitution.

You could start by explaining what therapeutic massage is and what prostitution is. You could even look at the legal definition of prostitution and show your colleagues that therapeutic massage does not fall within the legal definition of prostitution because it does not include behaviours characterized by that definition. Our first sentence is in the passive voice. The second is in the active voice. With the passive voice, your sentences tend to have extra words. The active voice has fewer words. And you know who`s acting. With the passive voice, the subject of the clause does not perform the action, but receives it.

The principle is widely accepted for general writing and there are many more examples. „The passive leads to a more verbose sentence. and often covers the actor. 1 „In general, you prefer the active voice to the passive voice for several reasons: it is more concise. It uses a stronger verb. 3 When trying to get passive approval from our listeners, our goal is to get our listeners to agree with what we say and our specific policies, without asking the public to do anything to implement the policy. For example, your speech may explain why the Federal Communications Commission should regulate violence on television as swearing (i.e. no violence before 9 p.m.). Your goal as a speaker is to get your audience to agree that it is in our interest as a society to prevent violence from being broadcast on television before 9 p.m., but you are not trying to get your audience to call their senators or members of Congress, or even sign a petition. Often, the first step towards major political change is simply to get a large number of people to agree with your political point of view. Let`s look at three value claims.

We wrote the term evaluative in italics in each claim: Put your sentences in the active voice, unless you need to use a passive lawyer should prefer the active voice to the passive voice in legal documents (such as contracts, conditions, opinions, laws, affidavits, and briefs). Most writers follow this principle when writing. But lawyers often don`t, arguing that legal documents are different and different principles apply. In all your writing, you want your writing to be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Yes, there are a few cases where you need to use passive, but about 95% of sentences should be active. The alternative to opt-out consent is to take immediate action or convince your audience to engage in a certain behavior. Many topics of passive agreement can become immediately action-oriented topics once you tell your audience what behavior to show (e.g., sign a petition, call a senator, vote). While it`s much easier to get passive approval than to get people to do something, you should always try to get your audience to act quickly. A common mistake made by speakers is telling people to adopt behavior that will happen in the future.

The longer it takes for people to engage in the desired action, the less likely it is that your audience will engage in this behavior. Each of these three statements could certainly be made by one speaker, and other speakers could say exactly the opposite. When making a statement of value, it is difficult to determine why someone chose a certain value without understanding their criteria for the evaluative statement. For example, if someone finds all forms of technology immoral, it`s really no surprise that he or she also finds internet dating immoral. Therefore, you must clearly explain your criteria for the evaluation statement. For example, if we look at the SUV claim, if your criteria for the term „fuel-guzzling monstrosity” are environmental impact, safety and fuel consumption, your evaluation statement can be more easily understood and evaluated by your audience. However, if you claim that your criterion is that SUVs are bigger than military vehicles and should not be on the road, then your statement takes on a slightly different meaning. Ultimately, when creating a statement of value, you need to make sure that you clearly label your valuation term and provide clear criteria for how you arrived at that valuation. Hiding the actor and producing verbose prose can be a bad thing in legal writing, and experts agree: in the examples we see an essential feature of the passive: the actor of the verb is not the subject of the sentence.