From The Legal Workshop (Duke Law Journal):
http://tinyurl.com/yaqyrfb
By John Conley, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Law School
To study the performance of trial judges is to study public behavior and public documents. It is thus inherently doable, even if extraordinarily labor-intensive. Appellate judges, however, do most of their work in a secret world that is seemingly impenetrable to ethnographers or others who rely on direct observation. One can study only the judgments and opinions they are required to release to the public; the performance that underlies these carefully crafted documents is immune to scrutiny.
Jeff Klenner Law Review Journal Article Jurisprudence, The Legal Workshop
Opinion Writing and Opinion Reading — download
The authors-a federal appellate judge and his law clerks-bring unique perspectives to bear on the topic of opinion writing and opinion readers. The contents of this Article were inspired in large part by the work done by the authors in editing and preparing the second edition of Judge Aldisert’s classic book Opinion Writing, which for many years was distributed to all federal trial and appellate judges, and to all state appellate judges, when they took the bench. A broader audience of professional opinion writers and students of the judicial process now has access to Opinion Writing, 2d Edition, an updated, comprehensive guide intended to be of wide practical use to members of the judiciary, judicial staff attorneys and law clerks, state and federal administrative judges, hearing officers, commissioners and private arbitrators, law librarians, scholars and students. This Article draws from and complements topics addressed in Opinion Writing, 2d Edition, while specifically highlighting the relationship between opinion writing and opinion readers.
Keywords: opinion writing, judicial process, legal writing, appellate, judiciary, clerking
Jeff Klenner Downloadable .pdf Add new tag, Jurisprudence