lenity
C2CEFR level
96/100Rarity: very rare
TechnicalRegister
The principle that genuinely ambiguous criminal statutes are read in the defendant's favor.
Where the statute could cut two ways, lenity tips the reading toward the accused.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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