Advocatus Diaboli

Attorney in American. Solicitor or barrister in British. Esquire in all forms of English. Avocat en francais. Abogado en espanol. Advocatus diaboli (“the devil’s advocate”) in Latin.

To alliterate, legalese stems from Latin. Res ipsa locquitur (“the thing speaks for itself”), argumentum ad hominem (“argue against the person rather than the idea”), and ipsi dixit (“it is because I say it is”) are all phrases with which first-year law students acquaint themselves.

But some legal terms of art have French word roots. For example, voirdire means literally “to see to say.” To see what testimony a witness will contribute, a judge must allow a lawyer to preliminarily cross-examine him. Latin and French were historically the languages of the upper middle classes, so court proceedings were held in Latin to keep out the commoners.

Spanish is also useful for American immigration and family lawyers who need to communicate with their clients in big cities. Demandar is a demand, or –idiomatically – a lawsuit. Basta is a word that Hillary Clinton used in one of the Democratic primary debates when she described how she would and wouldn’t deal with illegal immigrants.

To alliterate again, linguistics for lawyers rests upon Romance languages.

Published in the April/May 2020 issue of The Docket.