We hope you have enjoyed (and possibly been instructed by) our weekly feature, the Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary, which represented an effort to combine humour with seriousness in providing a piquant perspective on recent legal-political events. However, since there are only 26 alphabets in the English language, we now have to regretfully bring the curtain down upon the Dictionary. But who knows? We may well be back here soon, if it is true that the devil always finds some work for idle hands to do…
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This compendium has been inspired by the thought that a website devoted to legal affairs ought also to have a legal lexicon. At a less parochial level, Ambrose Bierce had the same idea when he compiled The Devil’s Dictionary. What follows—The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary—is an attempt at retracing the great man’s footsteps in the restricted world of judicial matters. In preparing the entries for this collection, I have been greatly aided by The A to Z Guide to Legal Phrases. It only remains to add the customary caveat. Any resemblance, in what follows, to any person or persons, or class of persons such as those belonging to the judicial or political or bureaucratic profession—living, dead, superannuated or currently in service—is wholly deliberate and intended. Just kidding: that was a printer’s devil! What I meant, of course, is: ‘is wholly coincidental and unintended.’ Besides, this lexicographer has a most healthy respect for the superior intelligence of lawyers and the politicians who hire them: they can arrange for you to be mulcted in damages at a moment’s notice; and as for judges, why, he (the lexicographer) is simply terrified to bits and pieces by Their Eminences. Or, putting it simply, in an easy colloquialism which I hope will nevertheless be acceptable to the frighteningly erudite legal fraternity and sorority to which it is addressed: No offence meant here, and none, I hope, taken.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary VI
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary V
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary IV
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary III
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary II
Also Read: The Devil’s Advocate’s Dictionary
This Week’s Entries
T
Tax: A middle-class affliction which the poor are too poor to bear and the rich too rich to be troubled with.
Tax Avoidance: Legal tax evasion.
Tax Evasion: Illegal tax avoidance.
Testament: A document that acquires legal validity only if written when of sound mind. This is why wills are not taken seriously in India.
Tenure: Permanent post accorded to professors in colleges and universities, as in: ‘the idiot never deserved tenure.’
Term: Duration of the period over which a post is held. Eternity in the case of private trusteeships.
Terrorist: One never knows, it could be you next.
Theft: Wealth tax, consequently abolished in India.
Tihar: Capital punishment. (You are eligible for it, if you are reading this dictionary.)
Toll: Highway robbery.
Tort: Harmful act. Hence, ‘tortological’, as in ‘anti-nationally seditionist’.
Transfer: A system of rewards for honest judges, e.g. from Madras to Meghalaya.
Treasoner: Soldier who passes adverse judgement on salt and haldi content of army dal.
Tribunal: Fresh lease of life for superannuated Justices.
U
Ultra Vires: Sounds like, but is not the same as, COVID-19. Though, if you blamed the government for mismanaging the pandemic, that could be interpreted as being ultra vires.
Unimpeachable: Most American Presidents and all Indian Justices.
V
Verdict: Sometimes reached in courts of law.
Vexatious Litigant: See entry under ‘nuisance’.
Via Media: A compromise, or even-handed balance between the claims of two disputants, cf. Ayodhya judgement.
Vicarious Liability: The notion that it is you who have to pay for the government’s budget deficit.
Violence: What is instigated by the other community.
Void: One of a pair, as in Romeo and Juliet, Laurel and Hardy, Salt and Pepper, Neck and Crop, and Null and Void. See also entry under ‘zero’.
Vyapam: See entry under ‘malpractice’.
W
War: An aspect of government policy deployed to distract citizens’ attention from gross national product and gross domestic mismanagement. Maximally effective, in democracies, just before national elections.
Ward: A child or young person in protective custody. For a pathological interpretation, the reader is referred—if s/he can withstand the shame, anger and revulsion—to the Muzaffarpur Shelter Home case.
Warrant: See entry under ‘search warrant’, which also covers the case of ‘arrest warrant’.
Wilful Defaulter: One of two types of legally differentiated Defaulter, the other being Absent-Minded Defaulter.
Will: See entries under ‘executor/executrix’ and ‘testament’.
Witness: There are three varieties—false, hostile, and suborned.
Writ Petition: Order from a higher court to a lower court enjoining or forbidding specific action. Necessitated in India by the lower courts’ disturbing record of delivering just verdicts from time to time.
X
X-Ray Vision: As in Big Brother Is Watching You. See entries under ‘Aadhaar card’ and ‘Snooping Bureau’.
Y
Young Offender: Underaged criminal, as in Greta Thunberg.
Z
Zero: A distinguished real number discovered by ancient Indian mathematicians and achieved by contemporary Indian jurists.
(The author is an economist who lives and works in Chennai.)
