Infographic: Super Careful Crackle Writing Lessons from SCOTUS

by | Nov 20, 2015

Super Careful Crackle Writing Lessons from SCOTUS

“Words are the building blocks of the law. If we aren’t fastidious with language it dilutes the effectiveness and clarity of the law.”

That’s according to the current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. as cited by LexTalk, a community of lawyers and legal professionals facilitated by LexisNexis.

The entry introduced an infographic titled, “9 Writing Styles Epitomized by Current Sitting SCOTUS Justices.”  It’s drawn from a variety of publicly available citations about how the Justices use the language – some of which are listed below.

According to the infographic, Chief Justice Roberts aims for “clarity” while Justice Scalia might have an extended acute affinity for “judicially brainstormed” adverbs.  It also indicates an element of caution, where Justice Sotomayor, for example, is a “careful speaker” and Justice Kagan a very thorough reader.

The infographic, embedded nearby, is this week’s Friday Share and is also freely available on SlideShare.  Here are a few links to the references cited in the infographic:

(click here or infographic for higher resolution)

Infographic SCOTUS

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Photo credit:  Flickr, Tim Sackton, Supreme Court in Bloom (CC BY-SA 2.0)







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