I recently learned that shall does not always mean will, it also can mean may, or must. I think we should remove the use of shall in our legal code and replace it with, will, must or may. I thinking of drafting a proposal but I would like to know what you guys think first.
The Oxford English dictionary I'm looking at is pretty clear that "shall" is valid when speaking in terms of obligation, which is what's in question here. "Thou shalt not kill" would be a good example of similar usage accepted in a common text.
Do we really have to go over this? What is the potential issue here? If the use of the word shall becomes a major issue that should probably mean we need to find something to be less bored with
I’m sure you’re well-intentioned here, I just don’t see a particular reason to go through the long and tedious process of changing the word “shall”.
I don't know what kind of contortions these people have pulled in order to persuade themselves that "shall" can mean "may". It even says that up until recently law schools have commonly taught students that "shall" and "must" are synonymous, in keeping with the definition I have referenced from a common and well-respected dictionary.
Whatever bureaucratic writing standards apply to the US legal system do not apply here. Imitating them can only serve to make legislation less accessible to our citizens.
Whatever bureaucratic writing standards apply to the US legal system do not apply here. Imitating them can only serve to make legislation less accessible to our citizens.
When I say "bureaucratic writing standards", I mean the actual FAA policy he linked. These are motivated by the complexities of common law and are therefore not representative of the language itself.
"Shall" is an archaic synonym of "will" used in tandem with a limited set of pronouns or, in the context of obligation, any pronoun. I don't need to google that because I looked it up in a paperback dictionary several days ago.
A law does not need to explicitly say "must" because laws are authoritative; because a law says you will or shall do something, you must do it. If you don't then you have violated the law by way of your actions contradicting it and are therefore guilty of misconduct or otherwise at the mercy of the delegate's ire. It's logical, differing wholly from an emotional assertion like "they shall succeed" or "they will succeed", in which cases the person is making a statement that may not be true in order to express the depth of their dependence on that condition.
It makes laws less accessible because it means anybody who wants to write one will have to endure fruitless arguments about trivialities instead of its actual intent. It's just laying a mine for potential legislators to step on.
RFC 2119, which defines these words for the documents that specify the things that run the internet, sees "MUST" and "SHALL" as synonyms for its purposes. I tend to refer to these definition when writing something, be it a law for a region or IRL in my field of work (software development).
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