A Unified Theory of a Law

Although we bear the burden of our laws, we cannot understand their meaning. Understanding belongs not to us but to the lawyers. They have a monopoly from which the citizenry is excluded. This is not very democratic. We ought to be able, on our own, to understand the laws that govern us. An intermediary between us and our laws ought to be our option not our necessity. It is unfair and unrealistic to expect us to obey laws whose meaning is obscured by inscrutable legalese so thick that the lawyers themselves cannot understand it. Moreover, there is a grave danger to freedom in obscurity. Laws that mean nothing can be interpreted to mean anything. Hence, obscurity allows political power to leak from elected lawmakers to the unelected interpreters of our laws. Because obscurity disentangles the law interpreters from the rule of law, obscurity opens the door through which arbitrariness enters into our governance. In the legal world, it is often asserted without critical thought that Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. This platitude, in all likelihood, was begotten by lawyers who were unwilling or unable to put legal meaning into easily understood words. Without easily understood words, we are kept in our place - beyond the pale of legal understanding.

The reason that the monopoly of lawyers persists is because one, standard, uniform, common, well defined and well understood methodology for communicating legal meaning (hereinafter, a common legal language) has yet to be perfected. The holy grail of communication - a common language - has not yet been found in the legal world. Without a common legal language on hand, available and ready to use, lawyers improvise. Yes, that's right - when lawyers communicate legal meaning, they ad lib! Improvisation guarantees that legal meaning is put into dialects of legalese that vary from lawyer to lawyer and, with regard to any particular lawyer, from occasion to occasion! Nobody quite understands what is being said and, hence, legal confusion tends to arise more often than not.

Imagine that traffic lights improvised. Instead of one, standard, uniform, common, well defined and well understood methodology for communicating their meaning, imagine each traffic light communicated meaning in its own unique, idiosyncratic way! No longer would it be possible, by understanding one traffic light, to understand all traffic lights. As a motorist travels, he must learn a new methodology for every traffic light he encounters. Think of the mistakes motorists would make during the learning process. Transitional incompetence would never end. The pace of travel would slow down to a crawl! Yet, this is how lawyers operate. The meaning of our laws is entrusted to dialects of legalese instead of to a common legal language. In the real world, traffic lights know how to communicate successfully. Why not lawyers?

Why is it easy to understand our traffic lights but hard to understand our laws? Traffic lights belong to a class of communication devices that are our most highly successful communicators. This class has a rigid internal structure so they are known as structured communication devices. They succeed because of their stubbornness. They never abandon the methodology by which they organizes and communicates their meaning to accommodate the authors who wish to use them. Instead, the author must adapt to them. This is important. Making the author adapt to them instead of them to the author standardizes and brings stability to the organization and presentation of meaning. Standardization and stability allow us to perfect - in advance and with time - a thorough understanding of the methodology being used. When we encounter a familiar methodology in a particular instance of a structured communication device, understanding is, thereby, instantaneously achieved. Moreover, by putting the same methodology into other communication devices, instantaneous understanding travels with us as we move from device to device. The twin benefits of instantaneous and transportable understanding are clearly evident in our traffic lights. Our traffic lights attempt to communicate three ideas: 1) stop 2) go and 3) caution. The methodology they use to do so is via illuminated colored lights: 1) green to communicate go 2) red to communicate stop and 3) yellow to communicate caution. Illuminated red, green and yellow lights are the parts of a traffic light that communicate its meaning. Motorist understand this methodology and, because, this methodology is used by all traffic lights, traffic lights succeed in communicating their meaning. Another example of a structured communication device is the scoreboard at a sporting event. Because meaning is organized on a scoreboard in a well-defined way and fans are intimately familiar with its organization, by glancing at a scoreboard, fans instantaneously understand the status of a game. Moreover, fans can get the same instantaneous understanding as they travel from ballpark to ballpark because each scoreboard is organized the same way. Motorist and baseball fans enjoy the twin benefits of instantaneous and portable understanding by virtue of using one, standard, uniform, common, well defined and well understood methodology for communicating meaning, i.e. a common language. Why not lawyers? Wouldn't it be nice to bring the twin benefits of instantaneous and portable understanding to our laws?

A Unified Theory of a Law attempts to exploit the principles behind a structured communication device to bring its twin advantages -- instantaneous and transportable understanding -- to our laws. This is possible because a breakthrough has been made in the science of jurisprudence. Legal fission has been discovered! Before A Unified Theory of a Law, legal thinkers did not make a clear distinction between the words of a law and the structure of a law. To them, a law was monolithic. A Unified Theory of a Law has discovered that this is not true. A law can be split into two components: 1) its words and 2) its structure. The words of a law, like ornaments, adorn the structure of a law. The words of a law change; the structure stays the same. Like the DNA of a cell, the structure of a law repeats itself again and again in every instance of a law. To generate a law's meaning, both its words and its structure cooperate. Anyone who wishes to push meaning into or pull meaning out of a law must be mindful of a law's structure. Any failure to respect the structure of a law generates inscrutable legalese and legal misunderstanding.

While many have taken notice of the words of a law, knowledge of the structure of a law is still rare. Are you able to distinguish between the words of a law and the structure of a law? Yes, you. There is a test. It can measure your ability to distinguish between the two. You are invited to take the test in the privacy of your own computer. Recall that Illuminated red, green and yellow lights are the parts of a traffic light that communicate its meaning. Assume that a law is no different than a traffic light. Ask yourself:

1. How many parts are needed to fairly and accurately communicate the meaning of a law and
2. what are the names of the parts?

Can you articulate the parts of a law? Can you name and number them? You can do it for a traffic light. Can you do it for a law?

Is it a cause of concern that law schools are graduating students who cannot number and name the parts of the structure of a law? Would you patronize a baker who is ignorant of the ingredients of a bun? Would you put your health into the hands of a doctor who is ignorant of the parts of the human body? Why would any client take a case to a lawyer who does not know the parts of a law? More ignominiously, why would any lawyer put himself into the embarrassing position of not being able to explain the parts of a law to anyone who asks?

Those with the weakness of schadenfreude can have fun asking the two questions. Clients, put the two questions to your lawyers. Law students, put them to your professors. What will a judge say when a intrepid litigant interjects, ‘Judge, may I ask you just two questions?'.

The two questions expose an embarrassing gap in legal knowledge. It is a gap that A Unified Theory of a Law fills. Because we can communicate no better than we understand, A Unified Theory of a Law proposes to open up your hood, remove the model of law you hold therein, and replace it with the latest upgrade. A Unified Theory of a Law will not give you any new legal ideas. All A Unified Theory of a Law will do is show you how to properly organize the legal ideas you already possess. The legal ideas are understood; their organization is not. Pardon me for peeking and forgive me for saying but the legal ideas you presently possess, like marbles in a can, rattle around freely and haphazardly. In such a state of incoherence, they make a poor model of the laws that run around outside your head in the legal world. Instead of possessing a high fidelity model that generates a fair and accurate representation of our laws, you possess a low fidelity model that generates only a poor approximation. Yet, even handicapped by a low fidelity legal model, at times, your legal communications do indeed succeed. Because only a handful of thoughts - about (10) ten - are needed to fairly and accurately communicate the meaning of a law, legal communication can get it right a lot of the times simply by accident. But why communicate by accident? Why not communicate on purpose? That a law is simple, not complex, holds down the failure rate for legal communication. But why have a failure rate at all? In the legal universe, why tolerate any linguistic black holes in which legal meaning goes in but can't get out? Why not drive down the failure rate for legal communication to as close to zero as possible by learning to number and name the parts of the structure of a law? A Unified Theory of a Law teaches that ten (10) ideas - when organized in just the right way - are all the ideas that are needed to fairly and accurately represent the laws that run around outside in the legal world. Because you already possess the ten (10) ideas, all you need to learn is how to organize them. Yet, by doing so, even the greatest legal genius can understand a law no better than you! With the proper organization of a mere ten (10) ideas, anyone can milk a law for all of its meaning. Both the genius and the citizen of ordinary intelligence will get the same quantity of understanding no matter who does the milking. Physicists have struggled in vain for years to discover a unified theory of everything; lawyers, however, have had better success. We now have A Unified Theory of a Law. It teaches that a law is simple, its behavior is regular, and its structure can be broken down into parts and mapped using the Triangle of a Law® and the Periodic Table of the Elements of a Law®.