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A news story about tobacco legislation opening the door to obesity lawsuits quoted a law school professor: "The legal theories are not inapplicable in the broadest sense of the word to fast food." My question is, is there a reason for using the double negative construction rather than saying the theories "are applicable"? My only guess is that it's a way of not quite committing to the positive statement. But is there really a difference? Is there some halfway state between applicable and not applicable (like being sort of pregnant)?
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not inapplicable
It does seem that usually, when this construction is used, it implies a certain unwillingness on the part of the user to commit to a definitive statement. In this case it may be that the professor didn't want to say that you could just apply the legal theories to the fast food industry without some shaping and fitting of the theories to meet the specific circumstances.
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My take on it:
If the professor says the precedents are applicable, he's positioning himself where judges sit. By saying "not inapplicable" he's only saying that he thinks that a judge MAY find the precendents to actually be applicable.
TEd
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It seems to me that such a double negative can be useful in many applications to mean
a small probability. I am; not without sin, but I'm not going to throw rocks and anybody.
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I would argue that "not inapplicable" is exactly equivalent to "applicable" in any reasonable legal discussion. If the professor says that something is not inapplicable, he's more or less stating it's applicability as fact. It's a turn of phrase rather than a turn in meaning!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I disagree with CapK. If the professor says something is applicable, then that's direct and something simply is applicable.
If the professor says something is not inapplicable, I agree with others above that the professor is hedging a big.
Now the professor could have said that something "is applicable, but." And that would have been a good way of hedging, too.
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Who am I to disagree with a lady?  Oh, that's who I am. Good-oh. Sorry WW, I disagree.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I'll go one step further:
In some cases, there may be a middle ground between A and not-A. In that case, "not not-A" is quite distinct from "A."
For example, consider "hungry" or "not hungry" - there is a middle ground where you won't miss the food if there isn't any more, but you would eat it and probably enjoy it if there were. Often that middle ground is the difference between heavy and slender...
But I'll have to leave it to the assembled multitudes to decide whether this point is applicable to the Court of AWAD or not.
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there may be a middle ground between A and not-A
Agreed, wofa, there are degrees of hunger, but are there degrees of applicability in the same way? My initial reaction was the same as CapK's, that not inapplicable is the same as applicable in reasonable discussion, but I questioned it precisely because it was in the legal arena. I know how fond lawyers are of splitting semantic hairs. We may be making a distinction without a difference, but.
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In the case of mathematics it's quite simple. Non-negative does not equal positive; zero is neither positive nor negative and therefore non-negative includes zero but positive does not.
In the legal case precision is everything. Just ask Sparteye. Someone's life can hang on a distiction we poor mortals consider semantic nit-picking.
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