This article explores the implications for English-language legislative drafting (and potentially other legal drafting) of a growing recognition that gender and sexual identities exist along a continuum.
The article first analyzes what it means by gender-neutral drafting, then examines how such drafting has evolved in the English-speaking world and elsewhere.
The authors argue that drafters should explicitly account for language issues arising from the increasing recognition of the rights of members of the LGBTQIA+ community and certain members’ desire to be identified in non-binary terms in legislation and legal documents such as passports, birth certificates, marriage licenses, and driver’s licenses.
The article was written by Dr. Donald L. Revell, former Chief Legislative Counsel for Ontario, Canada, and Dr. Jessica Vapnek, Lecturer in Law at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, California.
Read the entire article here.