Failure to Adapt:

Readability Deficits in Canadian Court Decisions Involving Parties with Unique Reading Needs

Abstract

This article reports on two original empirical studies of the quantitative readability levels of Canadian court decisions from specialized contexts, involving cases where we might reasonably expect to find highly readable decisions. The first study examines decisions dealing with young persons who were prosecuted in youth criminal courts. The second study involves cases where at least one party was a self-represented litigant (SRL). The results from these studies suggest that the relevant decisions are generally not written at levels that allow for the parties (or the broader public) to easily understand the decisions. To the extent that courts may already be trying to adapt the language and styles of their decisions, these studies suggest that further, or different, adaptations are probably required. The most obvious weak point arises in cases involving SRLs, where the average decision is (counter-intuitively) less readable than the average Canadian trial or appeal court decision more generally. The article concludes by identifying some of the ways in which judges who care about communicating effectively with their audiences can improve the readability levels of their decisions in order to better reach these audiences.