Every discipline is characterised by a certain jargon or technical vocabulary. According to Halliday register, being a defining feature of a language variety, can be defined in terms of field, mode and tenor. As far as technical materials are concerned, it is field that comes to the fore as a defining feature. Field is concerned with the subject matter which distinguishes one discipline from another. Apart from content, it is usually form represented by syntax, layout and tenor that helps the language user differentiate one register from another. Legislative discourse is the most complex and esoteric of all forms of legal register. describes legislative genre as being "the hard core" of all the written variations of legal language, where every attempt is made to write not only clearly, precisely and unambiguously but also all-inclusively. In this paper we shall examine a few instances of legislative discourse in an attempt to solve the mysteries underlying this complex artefact and to answer the question why legislative discourse is written the way it is. The data are taken from the provisions of the Iraqi civil law.