Law Commons^™

Guthrie's Guide To Better Legal Writing, 2nd Ed, Hannah Steeves

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The second edition of Guthrie’s Guide to Better Legal Writing is Neil Guthrie’s revised anthology of email queries and blog posts. The scope of the book is in its title: it offers practical tips and advice to legal writers. Guthrie’s definition of “legal writing” addresses written communication between lawyers, law students, and the layperson, although legal drafting is addressed intermittently. The book is not intended to be a comprehensive review of grammar and punctuation. Instead, it has an approximate agenda that is enhanced by the author’s personal narrative.

The author follows their own advice as outlined in the suggestions for …

Judicial Audiences: A Case Study Of Justice David Watt's Literary Judgments, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Applicants to the federal judiciary identify three main audiences for their decisions: the involved and affected parties, the public, and the legal profession. This case study examines a set of decisions authored by Justice David Watt of the Ontario Court of Appeal, involving the rape, torture, murder or attempted murder of women, in which he attempts humour or uses puns, parody, stark imagery and highly stylized and colloquial language to introduce the violence, or factual circumstances surrounding the violence, in these cases. It assess these introductions in relation to the audiences judges have identified as important for their decisions. The …