The vocabulary words from the old SATs are not legal or technical terms. Some are mere pedantry, the thing you throw into an essay to win points from a certain kind of grader. Others are evocative, precise, and necessary for a rich literature.
I love to use an uncommon word when it is the perfect, precise word, but I learned decades ago to keep those words out of ordinary conversation or documents. Still, if I have the right conversational partner, or I am writing fiction, and one of those words is the RIGHT word, I will use it. And if I am reading or hearing Shakespeare I want a chance to decipher the words that he invented (incarnadine). Even Twain will throw a word in that requires a dictionary (philopena.) I would have to contrive a situation to use that word, but I regard Mr. Twain with gratitude nevertheless.
To take away the old vocabulary is both an attempt to reduce the SAT’s function as a de facto IQ test, and a further step away from the ideal of a college education in the liberal arts (that is, those arts that a free man should know, and leading to independent thinking) and towards the idea of an education serving the needs of business and government.
BTW, a requirement for common language in contracts does not preclude an unreadable number of pages.
Exactly.