legal texts
Codified written laws
Legal texts are written documents with legal authority or significance—statutes, contracts, court opinions, treaties, regulations.
The term also covers scholarly works about law: treatises, case analyses, law review articles.
Legal texts are notorious for dense, technical language: The legal texts were nearly impenetrable to non-lawyers.
- Magna CartaCharter curbing royal authority
- bill of rightsDocument listing protected liberties
- amendmentChange to official text
- actDeed or performance
- Napoleonic CodeFrench civil law system
civil code · bill · agreement · terms and conditions · treaty · guideline · covenant · ordinance · constitution · precedent · declaration · case law · verdict · casebook · court order · statute · regulation · charter
- Islamic Lawsharia, Sharia, Shariah, Islamic law, fatwa
- Roman LawRoman law, Corpus Juris Civilis, Justinian Code, Twelve Tables, Digest
- ancient lawsCode of Hammurabi, Hammurabi, Roman law, Twelve Tables, Ten Commandments
- ancient recordsannals, scrolls, Domesday Book, tablets, papyri
- legal historymedieval law, Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, common law, civil law
- civil lawproperty disputes, Napoleonic Code, litigation, damage claims, codification
legal textshandshake deals
Informal contracts without paperwork
gentleman's agreements · unwritten rules · personal correspondence
legal textsplain language
Easily understood communication
everyday speech · vernacular · slang · text messages · chat messages
legal textscreative writing
Original literary expression
fiction · literature · poetry · personal journals · diary entries