[pfitzsimmons]

Math, English, Python, Chinese, Ruby - these are all just languages. Programming languages and Math are simply languages designed to be good at describing phenomena that can be defined with precision. Programming languages are optimized for describing precise sequences and procedures, while the language of Math is optimized for describing precise proofs. You could actually write pretty much anything that is written in math or Python in English, but the English language has so much ambiguity that you would be more prone to making mistakes. English would also be much more verbose and would not be parseable by a computer.

[tehmaco]

Precise English is "Legalese" - lots of definitions, qualifiers, and words having precise technical meanings.

[john_b]

The numerous compilers (courts) for this language frequently produce different and conflicting results, a situation which cannot be fixed but merely worked around by adopting the result of a master compiler as the authoritative version. The compilation process is also quite slow and very expensive.

So if legalese can be considered a precise, formal language, it must be considered one with an extraordinary amount of undefined behavior.

[pfitzsimmons]

It is more precise than normal English dialect, but still much less precise than math or python. At root, the phenomena that legalese describes are often imprecise. For instance, there is no perfectly precise way to describe the boundaries of a non-compete agreement, or what exactly constitutes "negligence." (This is why we cannot actually replace law with code)