These are heady days down at the Four Courts, where the pace of change is unrelenting. First came last month's news that, after only 84 years' deliberation, barristers had formally recognised the State and would no longer be addressing judges as their lordships. Now, before you could say "the wind that shakes the barley", the Law Reform Commission has joined the revolution by announcing a public consultation process aimed at translating all our laws into - wait for it - language you and I can understand, writes Frank McNally.
Actually, what the LRC announced was a public consultation process "on restatement of legislation". There must be a simpler way to say that - I had to look it up to see what it meant. But no matter: the result promises to be legislation written in plain English, demystifying the law for ordinary people. There hasn't been such excitement on Dublin's north quays since the crazy days of 1995 when the compulsion on wearing wigs was lifted, causing hundreds of giddy barristers to tear off their musty head-dresses and fling them to the winds in the greatest clearance of horse-hair since the glory days of Smithfield.
OK, so that never happened. As Henry Murdoch wrote in this newspaper on Saturday, "the wheels of change grind slowly in the law" and most wigs are still in place. On their enduring popularity, he also wrote: "One criminal law barrister jokingly told me that [ a wig] was necessary to clearly distinguish the lawyers from the accused". This is fair enough. I think we can all agree that when you find yourself described routinely as a "criminal law barrister", you need all the distinguishing marks you can get. But there's no such excuse for the rest of them.
Incidentally, by coincidence, the Rules of the Road are also now undergoing a rewrite, again with the help of public consultation. Not surprisingly, archaic legal language has leaked into these occasionally, and even on to signposts. Take the word "Yield", which still greets you when emerging from a side road.
Outside of RTÉ's farming news, does anyone anywhere still use this term in conversation? I imagine that an 18th-century highwayman might have said it when holding up a mail coach; and indeed, the OED translates the verb's non-agricultural meaning as "give up, deliver over, surrender". This hardly speaks to the modern Irish person (unless he's driving a stolen car). And as for the Lithuanian with only basic English, how is he supposed to deduce from the word "yield" that he does not have right of way? A sign saying "whoa, there!" or "hold on a minute" would communicate the message better.
But getting back to law reform, Mr Murdoch, a legal lexicographer, highlights several of the sins popular with draftspeople, from lengthy separations of subject and verb to the use of the passive rather than active voice. Then he unwittingly illustrates the latter habit while highlighting a third issue: "It is frequently the case that a conditional clause is put at the beginning of a sentence [ so that] the reader is met with an exception before knowing what the substantive position is." That is the common man's experience of the law, right there. In everyday life, you meet people and things, giving you some control over the transaction. Then you go down to the Four Courts to discuss your case and suddenly, instead, you are met: by barristers, exceptions, TV cameras, etc. This puts you off balance from the start. From there you are at the mercy of the lawyers, which is where they like to have you.
Mutatis mutandis, any popularisation of the law will have to extend to addressing barristers' annoying habit of using Latin to make simple expressions sound profound. There are few spectacles so ridiculous as a senior counsel remarking of something "res ipsa loquitur", and the court reporter not only quoting him but explaining to readers that the phrase means "it goes without saying". By then, between them, they've said it twice and both the law and the English language have been brought into disrepute.
I know there are those who will argue that these changes are cosmetic, that the real problem with the courts system is the delay in securing justice. But in conclusion, I have a suggestion that might speed things up. It occurred to me while I was attending a case recently in the old distillery building in Smithfield, where the High Court now occupies some rooms. These have become known informally as the "Distillery Court" - which is what gave me the idea. Namely that instead of the cumbersome and time-consuming method of proving issues "beyond reasonable doubt", certain criminal cases could be fast-tracked by a new Distillery Court standard: 70 per cent proof.
Of course, the option would have to be voluntary and acceptable to both parties. No doubt miscarriages of justice might result. But it could do for the courts system what the online betting exchanges have done for sports gamblers, matching those confident of their opinions with the equally confident contrary-minded. It would offer quick, no-frills justice, allowing busy people - risk-takers by definition - to get on with their lives (or not, depending on the verdicts). Yes, it's a radical proposal. Maybe it's mad. But it just might work.