Revista Volumen I (formato pdf) - Academia Puertorriqueña de ...

184 Rev. Acad. Puert. De Jur. Y Leg. 1:1 177, 1989correcto del idioma, con excepciones claro está. Ya lo expresaba otrojurista, el novelista inglés, Henry Fielding, al sostener que los abogadosescriben desafiando las reglas del idioma. Apunta Fielding que: "And asto the lawyer, they are well known to have been very little acquaintedwith the commonwealth of literature, and to have always acted and writtenin defiance to its laws". 20 A pesar de que como dice José Puig Brutauen su artículo titulado: "El lenguaje del derecho". 21 "Los conceptos y laspalabras que las expresan son los instrumentos del Derecho." Igual afirmaciónhizo años antes Glanville Williams en su estudio "Language andthe Law" 22 expresa que:Coming down to the more narrowly professional point of view,words are of central importance for the lawyer be- cause they are,in a very particular way, the tools of his trade. Words occupy thelawyer's attention in the drafting and interpretation of statutes,wills, contracts and other legal documents. Other specialists, suchas engineers, surgeons, and painters, are also concerned ín partwith words (namely, the words in which they communicate theirideas to each other), but not to the extent that lawyers are. 2320 Henry Fielding, "The Commonwealth of Letters, (1732), citado por G.V.V.Nicholls, "Of Writing by Lawyers", The Canadian Bar Review, Volume XXVII,1999, p. 1209.21 José Puig Brutau, "El lenguaje del Derecho", Revista de Derecho Privado,Tomo XXXV, (1952), p. 977, cita a la página 982.22 Glanville Williams, "Language and the Law", The Law Quarterly Review,Volume 61, (1945), p. 71; p. 179; p. 293; p. 384; Volume 62, (1446), p. 387.Para unas interesantes observaciones sobre el lenguaje y el pensamiento jurídicovéase, Otto Brusiin, El pensamiento jurídico, traducción del alemán por JoséPuig Brutau, Buenos Aires, Ediciones Jurídicas Europa-América, 1959, III, "Losproductos del pensamiento jurídico," p. 95, especialmente desde la página 119.23 Cf. William Seagle, "The dictionary theory of justice" en su libro, Law. Thescience of inefficiency, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1952, II, p.16. Allíse indica que:"The mechanisms of justice are no more conducive to its efficiency than theconfusion of its objectives. Justice rests upon the dictionary. Legal rights andduties are deduced from words -words employed by parties in making contracts,will, and in entering into other types of legal transactions, words employed bycourts in formulating rules of law in judicial decisions, and words employed bylawmakers in codes of law and in individual acts of legislation. Words, ofcourse, are employed in other sciences; but in such sciences, they serve merelythe purpose of recording their results. Words are, however, the very tools of thelaw. The dictionary is always the most important book in the lawyer's library."