A Glossary of Constitutional Terms: English / Nepali

The Use of Sexist LanguageAnother aspect of legal writing, influenced by the drafting tradition,might lead readers to wonder whether the law has anything to sayabout women. In most legal documents, one finds only 'man', 'he','him' and 'his.' The reason for this preponderance of male-centricwords is probably that (apart from the fact that all laws were madeby men) women had effectively no legal rights when early lawswere drafted, and they had fewer opportunities to benefit from, orto infringe on, the law. Early laws dealt with protecting the king'sforests and game against poachers (probably men), with property(owned by men) and so on. Sexism in the English language is amuch noticed phenomenon—even today, it is common to hearpeople assume that a lawyer or a doctor will be a man, and oneroutinely hears people say 'boys' when referring to a class of lawstudents, even if quite a lot of them are women!—so maybe legallanguage is also one more manifestation of that inherent sexismin the language. To remedy the situation in legal texts, drafterseventually used the statutes themselves to clarify that 'man' includes'woman' (giving rise to what would probably now be considered apolitically incorrect joke told to all incoming law students: 'man'embraces 'woman').Conservative and Cautious LanguageIVLawyers are rarely among the more radical members of society,and drafters are probably among the more conservative of lawyers(there are always exceptions, of course). So lawyers tend to err onthe side of caution—caution in terms of innovation and caution interms of trying to make sure that nothing is left out. We even haveA Glossary of Constitutional Terms