The Status of Normalized Drafting: The Need for Theory Building and Empirical Verification

Abstract

"Normalized legal drafting" has been defined as "a mode of expressing ideas in statutes, regulations, contracts, and other legal documents in such a way that the syntax that relates the constituent propositions is simplified and standardized." Although many legal academics over a number of years have asserted that there are many benefits to be obtained through use of the principles of normalized drafting in the enactment of legislation, surprisingly only one formal empirical study has been reported that indicates that the theory of normalized drafting may provide for the effective enactment of legislative policy. This paper examines the subject of normalized drafting from an empirical perspective and investigates the ability of current research to contribute to scientific understanding of legislative drafting. A framework to enable future research to achieve this goal is presented.