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by crazygringo 554 days ago
Indeed, I find the original to be less ambiguous. Why does the second version refer to payments and benefits in the first sentence, and then give them a name in the second sentence?

In the revised version, I'm now very unclear whether Section 3a payments apply to the first sentence or not. The original makes it crystal-clear that they do; the revised version almost suggests they don't, since they were explicitly added to sentence 2 but not sentence 1.

1 comments

They're often supreme Court cases over exactly this issue. Yeah varying definitions in different parts of legislation, which refer to different overlapping scopes or contacts. The court then goes to contextual clues for which reading is better supported. This can be the structural formatting of the legislation, public discourse of the legislature, or logical arguments. Overall, it's usually a mess.