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It is a founding premise of legal inquiry that one does not waste words: | It is a founding premise of legal inquiry that one does not waste words: words one has gone to the trouble of inserting, one must ''mean'' something by. | ||
Counter-examples are legion, of course, but of all the vacuities a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page | Counter-examples are legion, of course, but of all the vacuities a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page, none is quite so pointless as this: | ||
“[[This page is intentionally left blank]]”. | “[[This page is intentionally left blank]]”. | ||
Beyond dispensing with the | Beyond dispensing with the concern that there might be writing on it that you just can’t see, what could this mean? | ||
Should we differentiate a ''wantonly'' blank page from one whose lack of content arose from a weaker mental conviction? Might the author have been merely reckless<ref>in that the author apprehended the risk the page would be bare and took it anyway.</ref> or negligent<ref> in that a reasonable person in the author’s position would have realised there was a risk the page would be blank</ref>? or could it have been blameless inadvertence, the redundant page being overlooked through no cognitive operation, actual or constructive, on the author’s part at all? | |||
Agonising over the writer’s mens rea obscures the real question: WHO CARES? What difference does it make why a page is blank? It is blank: that is an existential fact<ref>Or is it? See below.</ref>. | Agonising over the writer’s mens rea obscures the real question: WHO CARES? What difference does it make why a page is blank? It is blank: that is an existential fact<ref>Or is it? See below.</ref>. |