Read the following passage, then answer questions based solely on information from the passage. The 'Plain English Doctrine' has existed since 1933, when the Securities and Exchange Commission required a prospectus to be written in a style readable and understandable by laypersons interested in making investments. The short title was the '33 Act, but the act instantly took on the common name of the Truth in Securities Bill. The Plain English Doctrine gained attention in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter required that all government regulations be written in plain English. In recent years,... Show more Read the following passage, then answer questions based solely on information from the passage. The 'Plain English Doctrine' has existed since 1933, when the Securities and Exchange Commission required a prospectus to be written in a style readable and understandable by laypersons interested in making investments. The short title was the '33 Act, but the act instantly took on the common name of the Truth in Securities Bill. The Plain English Doctrine gained attention in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter required that all government regulations be written in plain English. In recent years, mainly as a mandate from several state supreme courts to attorneys and legal professionals to extract 'legalese' from filed pleadings in favor of plain language, the doctrine has experienced a rebirth. Its roots in the American legal community trace back to Thomas Jefferson, who, as a lawyer, wrote a criminal bill 'in language for the persons for whom it was intended.' For decades, laypersons who became exposed to the American system of jurisprudence were hampered by verbose sentence structure and words foreign to them. Even if these laypersons spent time with a legal dictionary, they never did get the full grasp of what was put before them. No one was expecting laypersons to take formal law classes, and lawyers were not being asked to 'dumb down' their communication skills, but only to level the playing field with clear, concise phrases. Verbiage should be eliminated in an effort to make the legal system more accessible and dismiss the shallow, negative stereotypes associated with lawyers and their writings. Show less
Read the following passage, then answer questions based solely on information from the passage.
The 'Plain English Doctrine' has existed since 1933, when the Securities and Exchange Commission required a prospectus to be written in a style readable and understandable by laypersons interested in making investments. The short title was the '33 Act, but the act instantly took on the common name of the Truth in Securities Bill. The Plain English Doctrine gained attention in 1977 when President Jimmy Carter required that all government regulations be written in plain English. In recent years, mainly as a mandate from several state supreme courts to attorneys and legal professionals to extract 'legalese' from filed pleadings in favor of plain language, the doctrine has experienced a rebirth. Its roots in the American legal community trace back to Thomas Jefferson, who, as a lawyer, wrote a criminal bill 'in language for the persons for whom it was intended.' For decades, laypersons who became exposed to the American system of jurisprudence were hampered by verbose sentence structure and words foreign to them. Even if these laypersons spent time with a legal dictionary, they never did get the full grasp of what was put before them. No one was expecting laypersons to take formal law classes, and lawyers were not being asked to 'dumb down' their communication skills, but only to level the playing field with clear, concise phrases. Verbiage should be eliminated in an effort to make the legal system more accessible and dismiss the shallow, negative stereotypes associated with lawyers and their writings.
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