From a Supreme Court merits brief:
[The law] suppresses speech and beliefs that are protected by the First Amendment in an impermissible way.
Related Posts (on one page):
- What a Bad Supreme Court Brief:
- Not the Best Way of Putting It:
Not the Best Way of Putting It:
From a Supreme Court merits brief:
Related Posts (on one page):
What a Bad Supreme Court Brief:
I just finished reading Williams' brief in U.S. v. Williams, and it's pretty shoddy. The brief has many substantive and structural problems: For instance, it keeps arguing that the child pornography pandering law is overbroad because the law lacks the proper mental state requirements; but the government argues, quite plausibly, that the law does include those mental state requirements, and the brief never adequately responds to the government's argument. More broadly, the brief spends a lot of time repeating platitudes that are surely familiar to the Justices and law clerks, and far too little time responding concretely to the government's concrete legal arguments. But for now, let me just point to the less important but more obvious problems with the brief — the remarkably shoddy writing. I quoted the opening sentence of Part I of the Argument below, but here are some more examples:
There are many other such passages. As an editing exercise for a legal writing class, this brief would be excellent. As a brief in the Supreme Court, not so much. Related Posts (on one page):
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