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Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges

Perhaps the most annoying of all responses to a judge’s question is this: “Your Honor, I’ll get to that point later. First, … .” Go where the court wants you to go! Besides offending the court’s dignity, you invite the judge to conclude (as most will) that you have no effective response. And you invite suspicion that the promised “later” will never come. (Justice John M. Harlan asserted that the usual result of a postponed answer was a never-addressed question.) At the very least the questioner is distracted from your ensuing discussion, waiting eagerly for that to be done with and for the question to be addressed. As elegantly described by Ben W. Palmer, a Minneapolis practitioner of the mid-20th century, “Everything you may say thereafter may be suspended in the air like a levitated body or more likely a corpse—the corpse of your dead case.”

When following our advice not to postpone an answer, refrain from saying something like, “Your Honor, I was planning to address that point later on, but since you ask I shall come to it at once.”

Frankly, the court doesn’t care a fig whether you were planning to address it later or not—you’ll get no points for that even if the judges believe you. And the clear suggestion that the nasty ol’ judge has ruined your orderly plan of presentation will not be well-received. Just answer the question.

Ein umfangreicher Auszug aus diesem Buch von Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner ist hier abzurufen. Antonin Scalia, seines Zeichens bekanntlich Supreme Court Justice, hat gemeinsam mit seinem Co-Autor Garner dem ABA Journal ein schönes Interview gegeben.

Full post as published by jurabilis - German bLAWg from Berlin. on May 02, 2008 (boomark / email).