Specifically, little children learning words rely on the mutual exclusivity assumption where they assume that each word only refers to one thing and it takes more information to distinguish sub-categories or alternate meanings based on specific context.
A number of linguistic features of pseudolawyers stand out in that regard. Note the misuse of the word "equity". Since the term "equity" has a financial meaning, the pseudolawyers assume any meanings are financial-related as opposed to the actual mutual origin when property cases were heard in the court of equity.
The concept of lex specialis is essential for the complexities of a written legal system but many pseudolaw adherents don't seem to understand it. They seem to believe that if something can be characterized as a protected activity, it must be a protected activity such as "travel" being protected hence anything that accomplishes that goal being protected.
The reliance on out-of-place definitions seems to follow the pattern. They can't seem to understand that the multiple meanings of a word might need to be parsed differently based on context or that one statute might try to limit the meaning of a word despite the broader usage in the general society and other laws. Leaving aside the issue of hubris, I wonder if part of that is the inability to imagine the difficulties of writing laws. The "tell me how to make me a sandwich" or "no vehicles in the park" exercises emphasize the difficulties of writing laws but those exercises don't have a lot of visibility to the general public. The idea of one unchanging meaning would make reference to old legal dictionaries more plausible.
The garbled understanding of terms and context would make their repeated efforts to challenge the legitimacy of various laws on the basis of some long-prior illegitimacy more understandable. Law is not just the thing that Justice Holmes' bad man must deal with, it is also a set of somewhat abstract principles and several layers of abstraction deal with the evolution of law and the force of various principles. And it all gets called "law". The repeated references by some pseudolawyers to Bastiat's philosophical work The Law or J.S. Mill's Harm principle (very narrowly interpreted) suggests that they aren't citing them for persuasive authority but as binding authority.
I also suspect that a different cognitive feature is in play. As certain things in society get administered to the point that intermediaries handle a lot of the legal issues, some people can fall into the "if I don't see it, it doesn't exist" mindset and forget that a lot of those systems are sustained by the coercive power of law. They take the current state as the natural state. For example, the idea that all drivers would drive safely without licenses or speeding tickets is unlikely if one is aware of the state of certain people without the threat of punishment. Nonetheless, some people would assume the current coerced state is natural and argue that reasonable drivers would still be safe without laws.
Of course, law is often designed around the unreasonable, malicious, or forgetful people. Note Federalist 51:
The habit of ignoring the behavior modification of the system is going to make it look like these issues are simple or that men, in the absence of government, are angels. Under such blindness, the harm principle will be viewed more narrowly than a more Hobbesian approach would.If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Since learning words sometimes encounters synonyms or specialized distinctions, it seems that many pseudolawyers have a hard time distinguishing between when words are used with a specialized meaning or when they are being used as synonyms or other common usage. The prevalence of fears over trickery and the previously mentioned blindness to the effects of the system would make them try to find the secret distinctions that seem to be kept repeated.
The words used by authority figures can also be taken out of context (not unusual) but I think it is done so because the pseudolawyers are unable to distinguish between the florid speech of someone whose audience knows their limitations or the analogies being made. Note how Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 370 (1906) gets interpreted. The core of the case is about if a corporation has the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination but the later bit has a florid bit about
The later part is often quoted as if it was governing all of society and that the government only had power over corporations. The idea of contextual hyperbole in the mouth of a judge seems surprising to some people.Conceding that the witness was an officer of the corporation under investigation, and that he was entitled to assert the rights of corporation with respect to the production of its books and papers, we are of the opinion that there is a clear distinction in this particular between an individual and a corporation, and that the latter has no right to refuse to submit its books and papers for an examination at the suit of the State. The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to criminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution
The theory put forward by some is that the federal government only has authority over D.C. and such references are taken as evidence of that (famously Paul Andrew Mitchell's The Federal Zone") along with the misinterpretation of the word "including".Of course, there are people who try to sustain such a theory by pointing out the occasional phrases by politicians "this corporation of ours" or "D.C. has determined" when referring to the federal government.
A linguistic concept that might explain this is synedecdoche (the reference to the whole by one of its parts or the reverse). I suspect that some of the people might have some kind of defect in their linguistic processing of analogies or something similar that is used for synecdoche. Or it could just be some weird categorization error. Some people seem to take a trait that is displayed in a situation as if that was the defining feature. Note the way that some people assume the coercive action in a criminal case is viewed as proof of being inequity court because "equity can only compel".
Are there any other bits of linguistic weirdness you have observed? Opinions on my analysis?
