I write regarding Wednesday’s judgment (Costello J in Carrownagowan Concern Group & Ors -v- An Bord Pleanála & Ors [2024] IECA 234) chastising the use of “slang or colloquialisms in a formal judgment of the High Court”, in particular by reference to the terms “gaslighting”, derived from the title of an 80-year-old movie, and “into Mordor”, derived from a 70-year-old book series.

I express some concern about what demanding “precision and clarity” by excluding the use of terms in common parlance might mean for the swathes of people subject to decisions at the discretion of the High Court.

The second stage of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024 occurred last week, incurring yet again a ubiquitous condemnation for the abolition of juries in defamation actions, as well as consternation at the lack of regulations or provisions in respect of social media platforms, where defamation most routinely occurs.

If the superior courts not prepared to tolerate allusions even to what may be properly regarded as at least vintage, if not yet antiquated, media — how are they equipped to handle adequately complex civil matters for an Irish society that has evolved far in its cant since Gaslight was shown in cinemas, or the Lord of the Rings was written?

How do courts prepare themselves to represent disabled people who might wish to use disability-first language? Is the ‘person with autism’ more meritorious than the autistic person?

How can the court serve a transgender person falling outside the male/female binary, or is ‘precision’ to be restrained to a judgment of the court utilising binary pronouns regardless of the person’s identity (a movement popularised by court agitators in the last year)?

How is the court to respond to the substance of escalations in xenophobic incidents, as catalogued in a new Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) report — if they get waylaid into showing stylistic preference for those who engage in making “flimsy or non-existent” accusations but in the ‘precise and clear’ language of serious crimes to incite violence against people of colour in Ireland, who already “do so with perceived impunity … under their real name…with little fear that they will face prosecution?” How might judges not even prepared to consider ‘gaslighting’ an appropriate term, in the absence of a jury to decide on matters of fact, interpret Telegram dogwhistles and TikTok emojis?

Dea-chaint nó droch-chaint, one thing made repeatedly clear in my profession is that the lives of ordinary people are frequently imprecise, their events and recollections thereof unclear — sometimes only made sense of by grasping at shared cultural touchstones which might be rightly construed as an evolving ‘common parlance’.

It is in the most dire and charged of those situations that access to justice is sought through the courts, with judges imparting clarity and precision on the matters of law.

However, the progressive extension of that remit into matters of fact, should not be confused with a demand for the courts to employ more linguistic antiquity, less freedom to describe the factual experiences of people in cases with contemporary language.

Common law courts are not foreign to literary aphorisms, with some of the most accessible judgments in cases of public importance, such as the judgment of Lord Atkin in Liversidge v Anderson, remembered by students and practitioners for its reference to Alice in Wonderland (then an appropriate 77-year-old piece of media).

Though it is perhaps premature to rush the High Court hurtling with haste to Urban Dictionary, this judgment provides some fuel to the fire of objections raised by deputies at the second stage of the Defamation Bill last week — and by extension, to recent concerns about the lack of reflection in the courts, of the diversity of experiences in Ireland, by policing “appropriate” representation.

Dr Shubhangi Karmakar