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Practical Truth: The Value Of Apparent Honesty In Supreme Court Opinions, Timothy C. Macdonnell
Practical Truth: The Value Of Apparent Honesty In Supreme Court Opinions, Timothy C. Macdonnell
Catholic University Law Review
The focus of this Essay is on the importance that apparent honesty has on the persuasive force of Supreme Court opinions. Legal scholars and Supreme Court Justices have observed the connection between the Court’s legitimacy and the persuasive force of its opinions. Because the Court’s opinions are both an exercise of the Court’s power and the justification for that power, the Justices’ opinions must be persuasive.
The study of rhetoric has long recognized three methods of persuading an audience of the correctness of a particular view. Those methods are appeals to logic, credibility, and emotion. Of theses three methods, I …