Writing Advice from Scalia and Garner is Coming

November 26th, 2007 — Greg May

Via Carolyn Elefant at Law.com (whose blog post title, by the way, is quite clever) comes news that Justice Antonin Scalia has teamed up with legal writing guru Bryan Garner to author a book on legal writing. Ms. Elefant links to an article at Legal Times giving more details, and then asks some excellent (and amusing) questions:

Given that Scalia’s opinions (or in particular, his dissents), are often known for their nastiness or sarcasm, I’m particularly curious about the advice that he’ll provide to lawyers. Will Scalia counsel restraint and professionalism in legal writing, and if so, how will he reconcile that with his own opinions? Will Scalia offer “real life examples” of legal briefs or arguments that don’t simply don’t work, and if so, will readers be able to recognize the lawyers whose work is critiqued in the book?

Like I’ve said before, judges get away with things lawyers would never (or should never) dream of writing. One of the perks, I guess.