Usability engineering applied to the law

[quikchange]

While designing user interfaces at VMware, we take great care to ensure that all the text we display is succinct, clear and relevant. We do this because people simply don't read long swathes of text that aren't interesting or entertaining. Wouldn't it be wonderful if legal text was held to the same standard? ...if the entire body of tax law had to fit within a few thousand words instead of several million? ...if product license agreements were restricted to a few hundred words instead of being dozens of pages long?

If ignorance is not going to be accepted as an excuse for violating the law then it seems only fair that the law ought to be redesigned so it takes human cognitive limitations into account.

Update: evidently the Brit gov't agrees with me.