Long-leash Legalese

We mention over in the Tough-o-Meter section that the language of this document is a startlingly poetic style known as legalese. It's dry, it's super-duper official, and it plays fast and loose with punctuation. The interesting thing about Lend-Lease is, however, that it uses legalese to basically allow the president to have his cake and eat it too.

On the one hand, it sets up very strict rules, like requiring the president to confer with the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Naval Operations of the Navy before supplying a foreign nation with weapons. On the other, it loosens up on those rules when it gives the president the power to strike a deal with a foreign nation in whatever way he wants, like in Section 2, or change of the rules of the game partway through, like in Section 10.

Perhaps it should be called: "legal-ease."