In a surprise to absolutely no one, Justice Kagan's opinion in Jack Daniels is a terrific piece of #LegalWriting. Here's a quick #WilenskyOnStyle thread about the introduction, which illustrates an organizational trick I love to keep the reader on track. /1
First, the full opinion is here. /2 supremecourt.gov
So what is the organizational trick? Repetition of key words - at the *beginning* of sentences - so that the reader always knows what's coming. /3
The organizational challenge is the Jack Daniels raised two arguments throughout the lawsuit - an infringement argument and a dilution argument. /4
One organizational approach would be to describe the infringement claim, the lower court's decision, and SCOTUS's holding, and then move on to do the same with the dilution claim. /5
But Kagan wanted to take a chronological approach - describing both claims first, then describing the lower court's disposition of both claims, then describing SCOTUS's holding for both claims. /6
How does she manage that without tripping up the reader as she jumps back-and-forth between each claim? Let's take a look! /7
Here's where she first introduces both claims. ("It" refers to Jack Daniels in the highlighted text.) /8
The next sentence repeats the key words from the previous sentence: "Bad Spaniels had infringed the marks." She is describing Jack Daniels's argument, but doesn't tell us that until the next clause ("the argument ran"), so that she can start the sentence w/ the repeated words. /9
And then she goes back and pulls the dilution language into the next sentence, repeating the clause using parallel phrasing: "And Bad Spaniels had diluted the marks . . ." And again, instead of starting w/ "Jack Daniels further argued," she puts the "dilution" clause first. /10
Now she's ready to tell us what the lower court did. First, the infringement point. Notice how she uses the word "infringement" early in the key sentence? /11
And when she shifts to the lower court's handling of the dilution issue, she puts the word "dilution" close to the beginning of the sentence as well. (As an aside, what do we think of her referring to Jack Daniels as simply "Jack"?) /12
And now we get to the SCOTUS holding. She starts with a 5-word topic sentence that tells us the key point of the paragraph. /13
And then? You guessed it! She introduces the infringement holding w/ a sentence that puts the word "infringement" at the beginning. (My tweak: I would have added the word "one" at the end of the sentence bc "substantial" feels like it needs something to modify.) /14
And then she introduces the dilution holding in the same way, with the key word "dilution" at the start of the sentence. /15
I love this intro bc it's a great example of how great writing choices are often invisible to the reader. The reader follows the organization seamlessly, without having to think about how the pieces fit together, because Kagan has done all of the work to make it easy for us./fin
Loading suggestions...