Satirical Legal Dictionary

NOT Black’s Law Dictionary

From the cold lands of Minnesota, comes lawyer Adam Johnson and his work-in-progress satirical legal dictionary found here, titled Deuce-Ace’s Law Dictionary.” It contains helpful definitions like this one:

adultery. 1. to act upon instinct. 2. a proximate cause of manslaughter.

Always happy to promote legal humor, I asked Adam to write an introduction to his work:

When one contemplates the idea of a legal dictionary – which one probably is not in the habit of doing of a quiet evening, but whatever – Black’s invariably comes to mind. That profuse work by Henry Campbell Black continues to dominate the legal lexicographical field. It is a seminal work, and this humble writer would not deny Professor Garner that claim. Black’s achievement is magnificent and its ubiquity is self-evident. It is relied on by the Alaskan judge, the weary Floridian student of law and the hack divorce lawyer in Billings. Thousands of copies fall from shelves yearly in all the blessed states of the union. We should rejoice in such an authoritative voice.

Yet there is a certain natural gloominess in the amalgamation of lexical authority in a single source: an almost inorganic limitation, if one may be so bold as to make such an unclear claim. At times it is necessary for the mutterings of another, if only to second or oppose a motion. Language is a thing argued over interminably by lawyers, and it is unfortunate that no Burrill, Kinney, Wharton, Bouvier or Mouldycastle has arisen in this century to add their say about words. True, there is Ballentine’s and Oran’s, both capable and extensive works, and Webster’s has made a go of it. But the field is wanting of something more.

A successful lexicographical work is sometimes that which arises from frank observation. It is simply candor at its truest, or not. It is the unfiltered examination of words by conventional understanding. It is stuff.

I reckon there are those pedants who won’t suffer Dr. Deuce-Ace’s work ab ante, but it is not for them he wrote. It adduces truth through farce, in a way, I suppose, perhaps, maybe. There are on the one hand mockeries and simple jests, while on the other serious relations of latent truths, or something. Scholarly square-toes will find much objectionable about the dictionary, as will the somber office drudge. This because the bloody thing wasn’t written for the serious type, but for your average mouth-breather, such as yours truly.

Dr. Deuce-Ace’s dictionary is a thing to be chuckled at over toilet-rites, not cited in a paper. It should sit on a ceramic tank – it should not rest on a cherry shelf. It is unconcerned with being authoritative simply because it is anti-authority and altogether brief. It needs no defenders because it is so patently in the wrong. It is a twaddling little bit of burlesque fit for the easy eyes of a man or woman at their leisure. It is, in fine, a bit of butter fat, nothing more. It is what it is, and it doesn’t pretend to be what it is not. And even if it were what it is not, it would still be what it is. At the very least, we may comfort ourselves with these final aspects of it.

Thanks, Adam!