The interesting thing about going from research as a biochemist to working as a lawyer is the imprecision of it all. In biochemistry we have the microliter, the mole (6.022 X 10^23 molecules), and the milligram. In law our standards of measure are the behavior of the 'reasonable' person, the 'preponderance' of the evidence, and determing whether an evidence's 'relevance' outweighs its 'prejudicial' nature. How many 'reasonable doubts' does it take to add up to a 'preponderance of the evidence?' Do we put 'relevance' and 'prejudice' on a scale?

A lot of the vagueness is deliberate. Sometimes it makes more sense not to set out precise boundaries. You can be ticketed for going above a certain speed limit but you can also be arrested for 'reckless' driving. What is reckless? There are too many things that a person could do that would endanger others on the road to describe them precisely. If the definition were a list of exact behaviors someone could up with something totally outrageous that was not on the list and get away with it.

The vagueness is also there to empower the citizenry. Different individuals from different walks of life can and do disagree about what a reasonable doubt would be under a particular set of circumstances. By having those differences decided on an individual basis we democratize our justice system and allow the standard to evolve as society's values change.

The other day streetsmart kickboxing ninja reporter asked me why attorneys tend to write such long, redundant run-on sentences. I think that a lot of the reason we do it is because we are trying to compensate for vagueness by adding as many details as possible, and by putting in many words that say roughly the same thing so that we can do our best to create clearly recognizable bounds for behavior.

It could also be that a lot of us just can't write worth a hill of beans.