I had to share this comment with all readers. I laughed until I stopped:
"Vel non" is especially hilarious, because even its English translation is useless.
- Whether, vel non, plaintiff complied . . .
- Whether, or not, plaintiff complied . . .
- Whether plaintiff complied . . .
A few years ago, someone, with a devilish intent, took a word processor and analyzed all the opinions for a given period of years issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. They counted the frequency of words and phrases. There was one judge who was stuck on "vel non." He used it hundreds of times, and more often than all the other judges combined. The study was published in the New York Law Journal, a daily read by nearly every lawyer in the New York City legal world.
Whether, vel non, that judge continued to use the phrase, vel non, is not well known to me.
7 Comments:
I am a briefwriter and like and use vel non. Any word or phrase, especially latinisms, can be used improperly, but there are times where vel non is a supremely effecient way of expressing the thought. I do not expect readers to mouth the expression vel non to themselves but simply to recognize and apprehend the visual chunk of information when vel non is used.
The problem with the example cited in the text has nothing to do with its use of the Latin phrase. In most cases it is equally superfluous to say "whether or not." If the same meaning is conveyed with "whether" alone, then the "or not" (or "vel non") should be omitted. But there are situations even in legal usage where the phrase is handy, and to lay ears, in some contexts, the omission of "or not" may seem jarring.
Moreover the example assumes that the only function of "vel non" is to qualify a clause beginning with "whether." In such a case it is indeed likely to be superfluous. But a quick google search, not to mention Westlaw, would yield a more useful construction, where "vel non" qualifies a noun, e.g., "Apart from the adequacy vel non of the selected method of service, the court lacks jurisdiction over defendant's person."
In such instances as that in the last comment, I submit that vel non may be translated as "or lack thereof." I find this phrase, like "or not", tremendously overused in light of its superfluousness, yet it can also have stylistic effect in some contexts.
In response to the suggestion that vel non can be translated as "or lack thereof": yes, it could be so translated, but that is a much more cumbersome phrase than the concise "vel non."
The main problem with the use of latinisms is the shocking decline in education in the last two centuries. Whereas Dr. Johnson's fluency in Latin conversation was notable but not unusual, few students today can translate their school mottos. Perhaps law schools should ditch their trendy, but ultimately frivolous, obsession with such nonsense as queer theory, critical race theory, and gender studies in favor of three years of remedial Latin.
Of course, some might consider this a strange suggestion. Which is precisely the mindset that got us into this mess in the first place!
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