Can we dispense with lawyers as intermediaries between the law and its subjects? Can laypeople have direct access to the law? The Plain English Movement (PEM) has long promoted the use of plain language in legal writing as the way to demystify the law, and many governments and private corporations have expended significant resources on drafting legislation and legal documents in plain language. This article argues that the PEM has exaggerated the capacity of plain language to render the law intelligible to the non‐lawyer, obscuring the deeper question of legal complexity by focusing solely on language and style. Using the law effectively requires expertise that goes far beyond understanding the meaning of the words used to communicate it: certain complex aspects of the law cannot be eliminated by mere simplification of language and this article demonstrates that other specialized skills are required over and above the ability to penetrate technical language. The paradigmatic illustration of the need for such skills is litigation.

This article reviews the general legal framework governing risk assessment of prisoners in the Israeli parole process. It highlights the excessive power the Israeli courts have accorded to the professional body responsible for providing risk assessments, which severely limits the parole board’s discretion to order conditional release when prisoners persist in denying their crimes. Such prisoners, especially sex offenders, tend to be precluded from participation in treatment courses, thus substantially reducing their prospects of obtaining parole.

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In "Looking Beyond Risk in Paroling Denying Prisoners," Dr. Dagan provided a refreshing critical analysis of the role of retributive considerations in parole proceedings. Its main argument is that if we are to make sense of the insistence on an admission of guilt, we cannot discuss parole proceedings merely in terms of prevention and risk. What is actually in play, at least in part, is retribution and moral evaluation. Taking retributive considerations into account enables a better understanding of the importance that admissions assume in parole proceedings and their role as a means of moral repentance and catharsis. In this brief commentary, we discuss Dagan's thesis, offering a few remarks on the relationship between retribution and prevention. We provide some details on the nature of parole proceedings and on the practices that may increase the likelihood of moral and retributive considerations being taken into account contrary to the will of parliament and to the stated principles of parole.