After a depressing week of gloom, we bring to you our Weekend Special column by S Subramanian to brighten your Sundays and tickle your mind.
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This compendium has been inspired by the thought that a website devoted to legal affairs ought also to have a legal lexicon. At a less parochial level, Ambrose Bierce had the same idea when he compiled The Devil’s Dictionary. What follows—The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary—is an attempt at retracing the great man’s footsteps in the restricted world of judicial matters. In preparing the entries for this collection, I have been greatly aided by The A to Z Guide to Legal Phrases. It only remains to add the customary caveat. Any resemblance, in what follows, to any person or persons, or class of persons such as those belonging to the judicial or political or bureaucratic profession—living, dead, superannuated or currently in service—is wholly deliberate and intended. Just kidding: that was a printer’s devil! What I meant, of course, is: ‘is wholly coincidental and unintended.’ Besides, this lexicographer has a most healthy respect for the superior intelligence of lawyers and the politicians who hire them: they can arrange for you to be mulcted in damages at a moment’s notice; and as for judges, why, he (the lexicographer) is simply terrified to bits and pieces by Their Eminences. Or, putting it simply, in an easy colloquialism which I hope will nevertheless be acceptable to the frighteningly erudite legal fraternity and sorority to which it is addressed: No offence meant here, and none, I hope, taken.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary V
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary IV
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary III
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary II
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary
This Week’s Entries
P
Pari Passu: Latin term—like ipso facto, per se and in extenso—much loved by legal practitioners for its ornamental value. It means ‘at an equal rate’, but it does not have to mean anything, and usually doesn’t.
Parole: Early release from jail. Some prisoners are on permanent parole. Police officers who might object to this are promptly transferred to traffic and road safety posts.
Patent: Operationally, legal sanction for the theft of neem and haldi. See entry under ‘know-how’.
Patricide: A favourite pastime of nationalists vis-à-vis the Father of the Nation.
Penalty: Judicial punishment for wrong-doing: you have to worry only if you are innocent or an urban naxal (i.e., both).
Perjury: See entry under ‘oath’.
Perverting the Course of Justice: Surely you don’t need a dictionary for this?
Plead: Always ‘not guilty.’ (See also entries under ‘guilty’, ‘mea culpa’, and ‘not guilty’.)
Polygamy: Nationalists’ favourite charge against the Other Community, inverted by statistics in Census of India 1961.
Preamble to the Constitution: The mood of the day, in certain quarters, is to favour a version in which: ‘WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SATTELITE RIGHT-WING THEOCRATIC CHAUVINIST REPUBLIC…’
Precedent: Excuse under case-law for perpetuating a judicial error.
Prima Facie: Another of those Latin cracks, prima facie unpronounceable. (You will find 23 different versions on the web.)
Promissory Note: Not 500, nor 1000, rupee notes. Not anymore. Demonetisation (see entry) cancelled the promises.
Proviso: Judicial hedge. Usually assumes the form of saying a lot in order to say nothing intelligible, e.g., ‘whereas these guidelines might be seen to be applicable, pari passu, in ordinary circumstances, they are subject to the reasonable proviso, inter alia, of exceptions that would arise from a close reading of Clause 4.1.3 in conjunction with Article 293, considered, in extenso and mutatis mutandis, with Sub-Clause 43 of…’
Q
Quasi-Judicial: Different in English (Kweizie), American (Kwazie) and Indglish (Kwazi), but in each case less than fully judicial, and therefore—if you were to ask Mr Bumble—only partially asinine (see entry under ‘ass’).
Quid Pro Quo: This for that, as in kickbacks in exchange for favourable defence contracts. Abbreviation of ‘So many million quid for providing such and such quotation…’
Quorum: A term in the physics of jurisprudence, used to designate the minimum density of idiots required to validate a meeting.
R
Racial Discrimination: We only do it to Nigerian students who come to India for an education. For our own citizens, we have caste discrimination. This has nothing to do with race, as our government argued strenuously in Durban in 2001, thus saving the day for discrimination by caste. What would we do without it?
Rafale: See entry under ‘lifafa’.
Rape: Occasionally, a punishable criminal offence—even if it is, predominantly, only an offence against women.
Recusal: A judge’s excuse to do a bunk for reasons of funk.
Real Estate: Always unreal. It is called under-reporting. See entry under ‘capital gains tax’.
Reasonable Force: Unreasonable violence. See entry under ‘guardian of the law’.
Record: Compendium of untruths.
Release: Only for permanent parolees, never for urban naxals.
Remedy: A court’s mechanism for securing justice for litigants. Once in a way it turns out to be just, though we have no means of knowing if this was actually intended.
Retainer: What you have to pay a barrister for keeping him interested in your case over the next twenty-three years.
Riots: Acceptable legal terminology for crimes against humanity such as genocide.
S
Search Warrant: A dispensable document for police entry into a seditionist’s residence.
Seditionist: 1. Antinational whose residence the police can enter without a search warrant. 2. A student. 3. An honest lawyer. 4. A non-vegetarian. 5. A public interest litigant. 6. A journalist who spreads truths.
Sentence of death: A verdict of the court which is always in consonance with the collective conscience of society.
Sine die: Latin for court vacations.
Slander: The reporting of ministerial malfeasance.
Smuggling: Economists call it International Trade. In the vernacular: “idhar ka maal udhar, udhar ka maal idhar.”
Snooping Bureau: See entry under ‘CBI’.
Solicitor General: Generally un-solicitous.
Stamp Duty: Minor source of revenue for government, major source for government functionaries.
Suicide: The effect of agricultural policy on farmers.
Suo motu: Rendered invariably, for some reason, as ‘suo moto’, as in the commonly heard lay observation: “what suo-moto, yaar, when the court won’t even take other-moto cognyejance?”
Supreme Court: An institution that is always referred to by Indian journalists as the Apex Court, just as elephants are referred to as pachyderms and criminals-at-large as politicos.
Surveillance: Legal term for bugging, hacking and snooping. See entries under ‘aadhaar card’ and ‘CBI’.
(The author is an economist who lives and works in Chennai.)
