Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2018
Journal Title
Marquette Law Review
ISSN
0025-3987
Abstract
The link between courts and the public is the written word. With rare exceptions, it is through judicial opinions that courts communicate with litigants, lawyers, other courts, and the community. Whatever the court’s statutory and constitutional status, the written word, in the end, is the source and the measure of the court’s authority.
It is therefore not enough that a decision be correct—it must also be fair and reasonable and readily understood. The burden of the judicial opinion is to explain and to persuade and to satisfy the world that the decision is principled and sound. What the court says, and how it says it, is as important as what the court decides. It is important to the reader. But it is also important to the author because in the writing lies the test of the thinking that underlies it. “Good writing,” Ambrose Bierce said, “essentially is clear thinking made visible.”
First Page
167
Last Page
196
Num Pages
30
Volume Number
102
Issue Number
1
Publisher
Marquette University Law School
Recommended Citation
Mary M. Penrose,
Supreme Verbosity: The Roberts Court's Expanding Legacy,
102
Marq. L. Rev.
167
(2018).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1334
File Type
Included in
Courts Commons, Judges Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons