Template:Amend and supplement

“Amend” versus “supplement” versus “modify”

Is something missing from the notion “amend” that means it must, well, be supplemented or even modified, to capture all lexical contortions to which a negotiating party might subject it from time to time? For example, you will often see, “this agreement, as amended, supplemented or modified (as the case may be) from time to time...”.

Is this really necessary? So we lose something if we just say “as amended”?

In this old fool’s opinion, no.

Amendment

To “amend” is to “change”. So is to “modify”. These words are exact synonyms. A language lover might argue that, of those three synonyms, “change” is the simplest and, therefore, best.

Supplement

To “supplement” is not, quite, a synonym, but nearly: one might append something to the foot of an agreement — that is to say, supplement it — in a way that has no effect on the agreement itself, the same way one might “supplement” a Morris Minor with a caravan and head off to Wales. So loaded, your Morris might struggle over the Chilterns, but it is still the same, unamended vehicle. But an agreement so “supplemented” isn’t changed, so there is no harm in neglecting that kind of supplement from your catalogue of legal contingencies. If your supplement does change the terms of the existing agreement, as a physical conversion of a Morris Minor into a campervan might, then — well, it is an amendment, isn’t it? In that sense “supplement” is an exact, and redundant, synonym for “amend”.

What definitely won’t change

Will this irrefutable logic now end the legal eagle’s fetish for adumbrating the different ways by which one might “alter, amend, truncate, supplement, modify, augment, diminish, expand, contract, extend, retract, deprecate, elaborate, embellish, distill or otherwise change” a legal compact?

Will it hell.