Legislative bill language can be ridiculously dense even for simple provisions

Evidence

Worst of all were the bills. Every morning when he arrived at his desk, there would be a pile of new ones a foot high. He would try the one that looked simplest, perhaps an act setting the maximum size of vehicles using public highways. “The provisions of this subdivision,” he read, “shall not apply to vehicles and implements or combinations thereof not over thirteen feet in width and designed and intended for use solely for farm purposes when owned or in the possession of a dealer in farm implements and equipment and within a radius of fifty miles of the principal place of business of such a dealer, including transportation of such vehicles, implements and combinations thereof as a load on another vehicle, such vehicle or load not to exceed thirteen feet in width, during the same period and under the same conditions and restrictions as hereinbefore in this subdivision provided for such vehicles and implements and combinations thereof when used solely for farm purposes.” … The wording was difficult enough for the expert. It might have been designed to mock a man whose schooling had ended in the eighth grade, who had never liked to read even the simple books of childhood, who, he had said once, had in his entire life read only one book cover to cover: The Life of John L. Sullivan. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 514

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider theme in the reader’s library of how state/bureaucratic instruments of control work — ‘The Social Control of Impersonal Trust,’ state paperwork in ‘Along the Archival Grain.’ — connects to: An aide’s encyclopedic grasp of state law made legislative battles unwinnable for opponents — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 480; Legislatures can use declaratory language to correct unwelcome judicial decisions — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4830; Detailed statutes force legislatures into future amendment burdens that interpretation could carry — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 3894

Broader Connections

• Detailed statutes force legislatures into future amendment burdens that interpretation could carry #expands (0.72) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 3894
• Legislatures can use declaratory language to correct unwelcome judicial decisions #expands (0.70) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 4830