August 29, 2005

Hoping for better written Supreme Court opinions.

Stories like this, about John Roberts's attention to editing and writing style, have inspired me to hope for far better written Supreme Court opinons in the future. I've also gotten in touch with depth of my displeasure over the writing in Supreme Court opinions, which it is my job to read and to make other people read.

From the linked article:
Careful wording is "part of his approach to the practice of law," said David G. Leitch, the general counsel to the Ford Motor Company, who overlapped with Mr. Roberts at the law firm Hogan & Hartson and at the Justice Department in the 1990's. Something as minor as punctuation style could cause Mr. Roberts to demand revisions; longer debates "over the way certain sentences were phrased and the possible unintended meaning of certain phraseology" were a hallmark of his style, Mr. Leitch said.

"Judge Roberts always viewed it as a point of pride that we really strived to make everything in our briefs perfect," Mr. Leitch said. "Not that we always achieved it. But he was a stickler for everything, from spacing errors to the formation of quotation marks to grammar, and to the actual construction of arguments. So it was definitely an intense process."

In Judge Roberts's view, he said, "your brief writing conveys not only your argument to the court, but it also conveys a sense of your credibility and the care with which you put together your case."

The writing of lawyers does indeed convey an important message about the quality of their argument to the court. By the same token, the writing of judges conveys an important message to the lawyers and others who are thinking about how much to respect the work of the courts.

The bloated, flabby, obfuscatory writing, strewn across multiple opinions has wearied readers for two decades. Justice Roberts will bring us crisp phrasing, clear reasoning, and single opinions for the Court — I hope.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Bah. Goebbels had impeccable grammar, you know.

Seriously, as a fellow former Managing Editor myself, I take a small bit of pride in the kind of anal retentive nit-picking that Judge Roberts appears to share with me, although he's almost certainly much better at it.

Heh heh. I wonder if the Democrats on Judiciary will respond to this by demanding that the Whte House release Roberts's college English lit compositions?

DEANBERRY said...
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Unknown said...

As I care for myself I must care for all mankind, or something. I think Donne said that.

Anyway, Gog and Magog are in the Bible somewhere. Grog is what sailors drink. Magoo was a blind man on cartoons. And I think that makes about as much sense as Dean Berry. (Ooh! I wonder if he's related to Frankenberry....)

Troy said...

eddie,

Unfortunately I do know what deanberry is talking about. You see he is a "fringe" branch of a weird conglomeration of far-right (making neocons and paleocons look like commies) politics and fringe theological interpretation os the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation; end-times eschatology. He is the cousin of snake handlers, Randall Terry-style (Operation Rescue) anti-abortion protesting and that a-hole "godhatesfags" guy that is protesting at GI funerals.

I'm a conservative Christian and I find deanberry despicable -- if he is sincere and is aligned with whom I think he is he shouldn't so ardently look forward to the end. Not only does he think that will make you repent, but he wants you to buy his record too.

SCOTUS opinions, I gave my undergrad students in Con Law a bunch of Holmes, Jackson, Frankfurter, et al. to read and brief and they understood them better than some of today's opinions. Come to think of it... so do I.

Troy said...

Eddie... exactly. Yeah.. he's just glomming onto Ann's fabulousness to sell records.

Ann Althouse said...

Okay. I destroyed that thing. Wasn't that fabulous!

Ann Althouse said...

Saul: This is what I find intolerable. I expect an improvement with Roberts.