Style and Substance

Trying to get your head around what is going on in judicial opinions is no easy task. The legal world is professionally opaque and often deliberately so; it is as though there was a continuing and ill-disguised conspiracy against the laity. Furthermore, because judges come in many, but not all, shapes and sizes, so do their judgements—they can be good, bad and indifferent in style and substance. As such, it is fair to say that law libraries are not generally regarded as repositories of ­literary style and engaging reading.

That said, there has been, for the last couple of decades, a growing tendency to view law as literature and to explore judicial opinions in literary and rhetorical terms. For some, this reveals the poor or contentious quality of judicial writing and professional style. For others, this offers a rich and transformative window not only on the dynamics of judicial opinion writing, but also on the very nature of what law is. Is law merely illuminated...