Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
Abstract
Judges are writers first. And many write exceptionally well, lacing their prose with artful passages, vivid descriptions, stinging rebukes, and clever turns of phrase. What's even more remarkable is that they do all this while crafting the law.
The goal of great legal writing has always been plain language. James Madison called for concise, straightforward language when defending the U.S. Constitution, writing that it "will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."' That's not an easy task - and anyone who has read a few opinions from the last 200 years knows that it's not always achieved.
Writing about the law in plain language is one of the legal writer's biggest challenges. This article celebrates some of the many examples of excellent judicial writing. While each example shows many qualities of good writing, the examples are organized into six strategies that all legal writers can emulate to improve their own prose.
Recommended Citation
Jill Barton, So Ordered The Techniques of Great Judicial Stylists, 18 J. Leg. Writing 1 (2018).
