The Legal Writing Companion: Problems, Solutions, and Samples, Second Edition by Kristen E. Murray & Jessica Lynn Wherry

Author:Kristen E. Murray & Jessica Lynn Wherry
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781531013738
Publisher: Carolina Academic Press
Published: 2019-06-30T21:00:00+00:00

Problem 5.5: I'm Relying on Quotations from the Authorities to Do the Analysis

Over-use of quotation in the application of the law to facts is a problem similar to the problem of over-use of quoting in writing and explaining your rules. As we noted in Problem 4.4, over-quoting in rule statements may be at the expense of a carefully crafted rule statement; here, this error most often occurs when a writer quotes from a case or statute and doesn't actually analyze how the authority applies to the case at hand. For example, instead of explaining to the reader how a court's rationale applies similarly to a new factual situation, new legal writers often replace that analysis with a quote from a case by inserting the new factual context and attaching the existing legal result.

We understand why this is tempting. As in rule construction, you probably feel more confident deferring to the court's language instead of your own because a judge is an experienced legal writer and you are a novice. Of course that's true, but over-quoting in application is even worse than over-quoting in rule statements because you are not taking ownership of your conclusions. New legal writers often assume that quotes speak for themselves; this error further complicates the analysis by leaving out the intended conclusion. Consider the following samples of substituting quotations for analysis. The chart shows the quotation on the left and the analytical gaps created by substituting quotations for analysis on the right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.