Along with the Supreme Court judge Ignacio Sancho, the UIC Barcelona lecturer Ricardo-María Jiménez-Yáñez has written the chapter titled “Office of a judge and the drafting of judgments” in the recently published book El derecho a entender el Derecho. Alcance y límites del lenguaje jurídico. (The Right to Understand Law: the Scope and Limits of Legal Language.) In their text, the authors address the literary genre of the judicial decision, a key part in the role of judge, and how it can be written correctly with clarity and precision within the legal field.
The book, by the renowned publishing house Tirant Lo Blanch, is in line with the current use of language in the legal field and has collaborations with prestigious academics such as Santiago Múñoz Machado, professor and director of the RAE; and jurists such as Gregorio Robles, Consuelo Madrigal, Antonio del Moral, Eduardo Torres-Dulce and Mercedes de Prada, among others.
Jiménez-Yáñez, lecturer of the bachelor’s degrees in Law and Humanities and Cultural Studies, explains the need for proper wording for rendering fair judgements: “Sentences must be written correctly, with clarity and precision, and not by mere literary urge, but as a requirement of justice in the decision.” According to the expert, like any lawyer, the judge “must know the language itself and the peculiarities of the legal language very well, because a fair solution to the problem often depends on the correct expression of the language.”
Accordingly, Jiménez-Yáñez emphasises as texts read by many professionals, if judicial decisions are written clearly, in addition to fulfilling their legal task, they will also disseminate correct, precise writing. “That is why we can speak of the ‘prominence’ of judicial decisions in the proper use of legal language, a responsibility that primarily falls on the Supreme Court,” says the lecturer.
The publication of this chapter is part of the scientific output of the Research Group of the Generalitat de Catalunya (file number: 2021 SGR 01336) (RESCAT 2030) of UIC Barcelona.
