Keyword: technicality
Below are all the Expressions, Learn the Lingo, and Videos that match your keyword
On a technicality
Today's English expression is "on a technicality." A technicality is a small detail in the law or a set of rules. It's usually procedural, so a "technicality" is usually not considered central to an argument or a procedure. This is most often used in the law, but you can also use it any time there are a lot of detailed rules in place. Let's start with the law. The law in many places is full of rules that protect people who are accused. Often that means that people who committed crimes, and who probably might be proven guilty, are instead set free on a technicality. They are set free because the correct procedure wasn't followed somewhere, because of a small rule violation, because of something that's not really about guilt or innocence, but is still important. Imagine someone robs a house and runs away with a bag full of jewelry and puts it all in the trunk of his car. And imagine he later gets pulled over by police for running a stop sign. The police officer, out of curiosity, asks him to open the trunk. The officer finds the bag of jewelry, arrests the criminal, and the jewelry is returned to its rightful owner. Case closed! Right? Not in the U.S. In the U.S., a police office needs "probable cause" to search private property. A police officer can't search a car out of curiosity. She needs a reason to search the car. And in this case, the police officer had no probable cause—she had no reason to search the trunk. So the search was illegal. If the search was illegal, and if the bag of jewelry is the only evidence in the case, then the criminal will be released on a technicality. Listen, he did it! He's guilty! He had the bag of stolen jewelry in the trunk of his car. Maybe he had gloves and a ski mask in the front seat. It's 100 percent certain that he's guilty. But the rules are the rules and the law is the law. The police officer didn't have probable cause to search the trunk, and therefore the criminal gets off on a technicality. Years ago, a popular candidate for mayor of Chicago was almost prevented from running for office on a technicality. Rahm Emmanuel is his name—and he did become mayor. But before he was mayor, he worked in Washington, D.C., as Barack Obama's chief of staff. He left that job to run for mayor of Chicago. He filed all the paperwork. He gathered all the signatures he needed. He followed all the rules. But then someone said, hey, the law says that you have to be a resident of Chicago to run for mayor. Maybe you, Rahm, lived in Chicago before, but you've been living in Washington, D.C., for the last couple of years. So some of his opponents tried to get him excluded on a technicality. He owned a home in Chicago, but he spent most of his time outside of the city in the two years prior. He did everything right—the substance of his candidacy was fine, filed all the paperwork, got the signatures, followed all the main rules—but one small detail, one small procedural thing didn't seem right. In the end, the elections board did allow him to run. But his opponents tried to get him excluded on a technicality. Voting in the United States is administered at the state level—even for federal elections. So every state has different voting procedures. It's becoming more common now to vote by mail. However, there's a problem. It's possible for your mail-in ballot to be excluded on a technicality. That means, it's possible for your ballot to be excluded for a procedural or small detail. For example, you could be eligible to vote, you could fill in the ballot correctly, and you can send it in on time. But if you don't sign the bottom of the ballot, your vote is excluded on a technicality. Again, this is a small detail that's typically on the margins of the main question. You were eligible to vote. You filled out the form, sent it in, but you did one small procedural thing wrong. But rules are rules, and your ballot can be excluded on a technicality. So that brings us to the president-elect of Brazil, Lula . He was convicted of money laundering and corruption in the Car Wash scandal and spent 18 months in jail. His conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court and he was released from jail. So that means he wasn't guilty of corruption and money laundering? I'm not here to say whether he is or is not guilty of that. But his conviction was overturned on a technicality. He was released from jail because his trial took place in the wrong court, not because of the evidence, not because of the witnesses, not because of flawed judgment, not because new information came to light, not for any substantive reason. The Supreme Court said he should have been tried in federal court in Brasilia, not in the court in the south of Brazil where he was convicted. The Supreme Court did not say if he was guilty or not guilty. They only said his first trial took place in the wrong court, so it was overturned. It was overturned and Lula got out of jail. That is a technicality. Maybe the court in Brasilia would have come to a different conclusion. We don't know, and we'll never know.
Election season is over in Brazil, it's over in the United States. The U.S. had midterm elections to Congress. And in both places, there were a lot of television commercials for candidates. But I want you to imagine something. Imagine a time when there were no television commercials for candidates. The first television commercials for a president in the United States came in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower ran them. His opponent was Adlai Stevenson, who thought TV commercials for political candidates shouldn't be allowed. And so here's a quote from Adlai Stevenson, back in 1952 when he was worried about TV commercials for politicians. He said: "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."
Yeah. Probably not too far off the mark. Actually breakfast cereal commercials are probably far more truthful and informative, right? Anyway, that brings us to the end of today's Plain English, lesson number 522. Remember that the full lesson is available at PlainEnglish.com/522. And this week that includes the step-by-step video walkthrough, where I show you exactly how to use the word "neither" as the subject of a sentence. That's at PlainEnglish.com/522. We'll be back on Thursday to talk about Netflix's new popular series on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The show is one of the most popular on the platform, but it's also being criticized from multiple angles. So that's Thursday—see you then.