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The Decline And Fall Of The American Judicial Opinion, Part Ii: Back To The Future From The Roberts Court To Learned Hand -- Segmentation, Audience, And The Opportunity Of Justice Sotomayor, Jeffrey A. Van Detta

Jeffrey A. Van Detta

In Part II of his critical study of Learned Hand's district court opinions, Professor Van Detta examines Hand's work from the micro-organizational level of segmentation and the macro-organizational level of the audience principle. Professor Van Detta then compares the district court writing of the Supreme Court's newest appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, and considers how the lessons of Hand's district court record might inform her own tenure on the Court to which Hand's ambitions ran, but were over run by his political luck.

The Decline And Fall Of The American Judicial Opinion: Back To The Future From The Roberts Court To Learned Hand, Jeffrey A. Van Detta

Jeffrey A. Van Detta

In September 2008, Adam Liptak of the N.Y. Times wrote in an article “American Exception: U.S. Court Now Guiding Fewer Nations”:

Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.

But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.

This is astonishing to many …

Learned Hand’S District Court Opinions, 1916-1917: A Macrostructural Analysis Employing Cognitive Psychology Principles, Jeffrey A. Van Detta

Jeffrey A. Van Detta

What makes a judge a good trial court writer? Should this be measured by the writing of the appeals court judges who review them? Does it even matter if trial court judges write well? These are important questions, especially with the growth of our state and federal trial court systems in the United States and Canada. Yet, they’ve not been directly posed, nor adequately answered, even by law professors who use judicial opinions daily as the grist for milling the laity into lawyers. The typical emphasis on appellate opinions as the exemplars of "good judicial writing” is misplaced. Appellate opinions …

Learned Hand’S District Court Opinions, 1916-1917: A Macrostructural Analysis Employing Cognitive Psychology Principles, Jeffrey A. Van Detta

Jeffrey A. Van Detta

What makes a judge a good trial court writer? Should this be measured by the writing of the appeals court judges who review them? Does it even matter if trial court judges write well? Examining trial court opinions that Judge Learned Hand wrote 1916-1917 on the U.S. District Court, this article answers those questions by applying principles of cognitive psychology in a detailed critical evaluation of each opinion and its legal and society context. This article makes a very substantial contribution to the study of legal linguistics, cognitive psychology as applied in critical reading of judicial opinions, and of Learned …