（2） Sociological Factors
Legal language is the primary tool of the legal professionals. Lawyers have on-ly one way of using their knowledge-through legal language. One important functionof legal language is the performative function. Legal language carries the force ofthe law. Of course： it is not legal language by itself that has that power. Societyhas granted to certain persons of the authority to make decisions over life and prop-erty. A society needs laws： and legal sanctity can help persuade people to followthem. This idea of legal language as carrying the power of law appears to be onereason that lawyers resist even small changes for avoiding the wrong legal result.
（3） Jurisprudential Factors
Common law is usually built first. In the law： terms： phrases： even the wholepassage： mean what courts have decided them to mean. Chief Justice Hughessstatement that "a federal statute finally means what the Court says it means" （Char-row： Erhardt 1995） is probably more accurate： as the legal system actually oper-ates. There are numerous instances where a definition decided either by the courtsor by statute differs substantially from the common meaning of the term. The inter-action between jurisprudence and legal language is nicely illustrated in the often con-tradictory rules that courts use to interpret the meaning of statutory language. Inaddition to these rules： the courts have created a host of maxims to take care of spe-cific situations. The purpose of these rules is supposedly to provide objective crite-ria for resolving statutory ambiguity. Courts often use these rules to support a par-ticular interpretation after they have created a decision. Consequently： differentcourts have applied the various rules and maxims to the same term and have come upwith different meanings.
展开
