The Theory and Practice of Legislation, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2022 is now available.

This special issue highlights two main messages emerging through a set of diverse contributions: first, legal language is a multi-faceted problem including matters of argumentation and persuasion, comprehensibility, ethics, transparency, and accountability; second, all these dimensions can only be addressed when seeing legal language in the context of its underlying normative goals, which cannot be reduced to compliance. These points emerge clearly from the articles in this issue in which scholars and practitioners of law reflect on the problems and potential solutions for improving legislation, regulation, legally non-binding instruments, legal rulings and machine-based legal decisions. As all studies demonstrate, legal language should be a fundamental issue of concern with serious consequences in the long-term affecting rule of law, legitimacy and ultimately citizens.

The papers included in this special issue have been presented at the interdisciplinary symposium held at the University of Amsterdam on 21–22 January 2021. Organised by Corina Andone (Faculty of Humanities) together with Candida Leone, Anna van Duin and Iris Domselaar (Faculty of Law), and focusing on ‘Talking law in the EU: Clear language, rule of law and legitimacy in the European legal space’, this event brought together legal and linguistic perspectives on legal language which helped explain the essential factors affecting the working and effectiveness of EU legal language, and look for appropriate ways to address them.

Check out the new special issue edited by Corina Andone and Candida Leone here.