The confusing language of Russian laws is high time to simplify

Indistinctness makes it extremely difficult for citizens to understand their rights and obligations.

In ancient Rome, they said: laws are written for the awake, not for the sleeping. The ability of citizens to read the laws was not called into question there – the vast majority of them were literate. Now all the more so – literacy in developed countries is universal. However, in relation to the laws, the mere ability to read is clearly not enough – one must also understand what has been read. What depends not only on the reader, but also on how clear the law is written for him. And with this, as it turns out, many have problems.

Therefore, I was heartily glad to read on the site of a popular social network for lawyers that New Zealand had adopted a “plain language law”, obliging the authorities to avoid complex phrases and special vocabulary in official documents. “Citizens have the right to understand what the authorities want from them and what rights they have,” said a member of the New Zealand Parliament, introducing the bill. I wanted to hang posters with these words in the meeting rooms of our parliament and government. Because the complexity and sometimes indistinctness of the language of laws and regulations makes it extremely difficult for Russian citizens to understand their rights and obligations. And without their understanding, how to use the rights and fulfill the duties?

Let me give you an example from my own practice. When in 1989 Izvestia published the draft Law of the USSR “On the Quality and Protection of Consumer Rights” “for public discussion”, its complex vocabulary was the first thing publicly noticed by budding defenders of these rights. And then both the Supreme Council and the government heard us. As a result, with our active participation, not only the subject of the project was changed (the topic of state regulation of product quality was gone) and its content (the composition of rights and means of their protection), but an essentially new text was written, which became much more understandable to tens of millions of citizens. It was this text that formed the basis of the current Russian law “On the Protection of Consumer Rights”, which has been repeatedly corrected and supplemented over 30 years, but, it seems to me, has retained clarity for the vast majority of those for whom it was adopted.

Alas, I cannot say the same about many other laws that are also addressed to the overwhelming majority of Russians. One more example. Recently, journalists have repeatedly contacted me with a request to clarify who is responsible for the correct operation of our apartment meters for the consumption of cold and hot water, heat, electricity and gas. I gave the answer that ten years ago, Rosstandart, the public council under which I then headed, gave the Prosecutor General’s Office to such a request: the federal law “On Ensuring the Uniformity of Measurements” of 2008 imposes a requirement for mandatory verification of metering devices – as primary, before commissioning and after repair, and periodically, in the process of operation – only for legal entities and individual entrepreneurs. And in relation to citizens – owners and tenants of residential premises – such a requirement is illegal. And that the costs of ensuring the proper operation of such devices in the apartments of citizens should be borne not by the user, but by the supplier of the resource they measure. Since then, these provisions of the law have not changed. So, no one has any reason to demand verification from us, consumers, and if the resource supplying organization does not take such an initiative, we are not responsible for this. And those who go from house to house not on behalf of such suppliers, scaring tenants with punishment and imposing their services, should be driven out.

However, not all experts agreed with this opinion, which made me delve into another law – on energy saving, adopted a year later, article 13 of which is called “Ensuring accounting for the energy resources used and the use of metering devices for the energy resources used when making payments for energy resources “. It would seem that this is where the answer should be sought. But finding it in the text of an article over 25,000 characters in size (more than half of an A2 newspaper page) turned out to be an extremely difficult task for me. Neither a law degree nor an engineering degree helped – I just tied it in 13 points with a lot of inserts from different years, seeming repetitions and logic that was incomprehensible to me. For the sake of interest, I measured one of the sentences – over 1700 characters, and I’m not sure that it is the longest. But now, armed with quotes from this article, I can both confirm my original position and refute it. But he himself is no longer sure of anything … The question is: why is such a law needed, which cannot be read even by a legally trained person, and its provisions can be interpreted both in one direction and the other?

Reading many of our laws, you are convinced that Tyutchev is right: “Russia cannot be understood with the mind.” And, it seems to me, the more “fresh” the laws, the more true these words are. And I would like their provisions, which are directly related to our life, to be nevertheless “understandable by the mind.” To which I urge our legislators. And for my part, I am ready to help those who dare to study the New Zealand experience and try to transfer it to our soil. I would suggest supplementing the regulations of the State Duma, which determine the legislative process at the stage of preparing bills for the second reading, with a special procedure for testing them for comprehensibility to representatives of the main social groups whose rights and obligations are affected by the bill. I think this would significantly increase the efficiency of the new legislative acts. Not all, of course, but even with regard to legislation harmful or useless to citizens, clear language will make this harm or lack of benefit more obvious. As well as the responsibility of those who vote for them, which also does not hurt!

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28899 dated October 27, 2022

Newspaper headline:
The law is not written to the language