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Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges | 
| Authors: Antonin Scalia, Bryan A. Garner
Publisher: Thomson West
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 4144
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 269
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0314184716
Dewey Decimal Number: 347.7375
EAN: 9780314184719
ASIN: 0314184716
Publication Date: April 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New B-48 **We Always Ship in BOXES"
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Product Description
In their professional lives courtroom lawyers must do these two things well: speak persuasively and write persuasively. In this noteworthy book, two of the most noted legal writers of our day Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner systematically present every important idea about judicial persuasion in a fresh, entertaining way. Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges is a guide for novice and experienced litigators alike. It covers the essentials of sound legal reasoning, including how to develop the syllogism that underlies any argument. From there the authors explain the art of brief-writing, especially what to include and what to omit, so that you can induce the judge to focus closely on your arguments. Finally, they show what it takes to succeed in oral argument. The opinions of Justice Scalia are legendary for their sharp insights, biting wit, and memorable phrasing. The writings of Bryan A. Garner, editor in chief of Black s Law Dictionary , are respected inside and outside legal circles for their practical guidance on the art of writing and advocacy. Together the Scalia-Garner team has produced a fresh, innovative approach to a timeless topic.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 Persuasion from a legal point of view May 1, 2008
Tom Carpenter (Marysville, OH)
69 out of 74 found this review helpful
I am not a lawyer, but I love reading about persuasion and influence. This book caught my attention out of left field, but it certainly added a lot of value to my understanding of persuasion from a logical and argumentative point of view.
Most of the books I've read on persuasion focus on the emotional appeals that move people and mention that you need to give a rational argument for the decision so the persuadee can feel good about it. This book teaches you how to make that rational argument, but it does more than that. It teaches you how to frame the argument before it is made so that it will be more persuasive when it is made. The portion focused on the development of the syllogism was particularly interesting.
Definitely a book that you will want to read whether your are in the legal arena or not - if you want to know how to influence and persuade.
Elegant, useful May 7, 2008
rbnn (Berkeley, CA United States)
39 out of 46 found this review helpful
Simply the best book on legal persuasive writing ever written.
Interesting, useful, fun, full of great anecdotes. Terrific discussion of statutory interpretation. Great references to scholarly classical treatises on rhetoric. This book is wonderful both for its analysis of oral argument and for its discussion of written forms of persuasion, like briefs. I wish I had had it earlier.
My only complaint is the same one I have with virtually all modern style manuals: they advocate a simplistic prose style, characterized by short, conversational sentences, avoiding unusual words, eschewing Latin phrases. But I personally often find prose that breaks these rules a refreshing change. I enjoy reading a word or phrase I rarely see but that is perfectly chosen. And I enjoy learning new words or phrases. This book would condemn two of the greatest legal prose stylists out there: John Marshall and Learned Hand, both of whose opinions often contained sentences that would not work so well conversationally, that were full of long, convoluted sentences and classical allusions. My sense is that in this joint work Justice Scalia, who can write rich and interesting prose, pushed back against some of the simplifying strictures of his co-author.
Furthermore, I think that often too much emphasis on simple words and sentences serves to make more complex ideas too difficult to express or to understand. Thus, the book (like most books) argues against "jargon," but jargon, once learned, is often a much clearer way of expressing something than a rephrasing.
And the Roe v. Wade anecdote is great! It explains a lot...
In any case, I am hardly qualified to criticize Justice Scalia, whose writing is far beyond my own. Anyway, this is a great book.
Potentially a Paradigm Shifter May 2, 2008
K Vaughn (Atlanta, GA USA)
44 out of 64 found this review helpful
Lawyers please read this book. Not just for your edification; but for the benefit of the rest of us too.
Why do so many people think lawyers are jerks? Perhaps it's got something to do with the way lawyers are trained that leads some of them to believe that arrogance, rudeness and boorishness are the trifectas of success in their profession.
Apparently judges of all ilks - all the way up to Supreme Court Justices, have seen more than their fill of nasty advocate's behavior in their courtrooms. So have I.
For the past five years I've trained trial lawyers, and some of the behavior I've seen inside courtrooms has not just been appalling, it's been stupid. As a non-lawyer, I must say that the vast majority of lawyers are not deserving of the stereotype they've been tagged with. However, there's a tiny minority whose nasty words and deeds more than compensate for the polite professionalism of the majority of their peers.
Attention All Jerks: This book is for you. The most important aspect of this book may be the one you want to ignore; but pay attention to the primary theme that runs throughout it: Your spiteful, oafish and intemperate behavior in court, damages your prospects of winning. You aren't just harming your client. Your income is taking a beating too.
Although this book is packed with invaluable advice for litigators and transactional lawyers alike, there is no more important advice than in this sentence from the Introduction: "Your objective in every argument therefore, is to show yourself to be worthy of trust and affection."
Look, again at that sentence. Is there any business or profession in which that lesson would not be valuable? In fact, is there any business or personal relationship in which that lesson would not be valuable? That is why this book should be read by all advocates for any cause.
If every lawyer in this country - and the world, read this book and fully absorbed the power of that one simple lesson, the profession might begin to alter its image, which as been around since, well, at least since Dick the butcher voiced an attractive sounding idea in Henry IV, part Two, "The first thing we do, let's kill..."
Written for lawyers, but valuable for everyone June 7, 2008
Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
We all need to make arguments. Whether it is something as benign as trying to decide where to have lunch or something as serious as whether Mom needs to be place in an enhanced care facility, we need to be able to think, write, and speak clearly about what we want to do. How do we form the argument? Does our order of presentation matter? What should we know about the person or board we are presenting to?
This little book by Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner is written for lawyers who go before judges, but almost everything in here can be easily translated into everyday life. The craft of a lawyer is just a special case of the kinds of reasoning, arguing, disputing, and presenting we do almost every day of our lives.
Do not think this is a book on Scalia's judicial philosophy. The authors point out several times that you must know the philosophy and predilections of the judge you are going before and adjust your arguments accordingly. They also remind the reader several times that they are writing for lawyers presenting to judges and not advice they would give judges.
The book consists of 115 little chapters that run from a single paragraph to a few pages. These are divided into four broad groups: General Principles of Argumentation, Legal Reasoning, Briefing, and Oral Argument. While these last three are clearly legal terms, you can simply thing of them as Building Your Argument, Presenting Your Argument Through Concise Writing, and Arguing Your Case Verbally. Isn't it obvious how you can use these things at work, in your community, and even within your social settings?
While we normally associate legal writing with dry as dust and inscrutable prose, this book is light, lively, and has nice touches of humor. The authors cite wonderful authorities on language, argument, presentation, writing, and speaking and provide a nice list of works for additional reading at the end. There is also a helpful index to find just the sections you are looking for.
I think this book is terrific and have placed with my very favorite references on writing and language. If you care what I think, you should get this book, read it, and enjoy the benefits of these talented and brilliant minds.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
An insightful and delightful book for anyone with an interest in people and persuasion June 8, 2008
Nicole Hamilton (Redmond, WA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
My only exposure to the courts has been the unfortunate experience of defending various complaints from my ex that continue to be served even to this day, 10 years after the divorce. So I'm no attorney and most of the time I've been in a courtroom, I'd gladly have been somewhere else. But still, when I'm not feeling trapped in the details of my personal situation, I've found the workings of the court and how motions and trials are decided to be quite fascinating. I'm an engineer, but I think the (sometimes) logical world of law might have been fun. The significance of some of Scalia's book, e.g., the minutiae of whether to use contractions, was probably lost on me. But I bought it based on some enticing interview snippets in the WSJ Law Blog and I was definitely not disappointed.
I enjoyed the insight it offered into just how the whole thing works and found myself agreeing, on a number of occasions involving, surely, the more obvious points, that I'd noticed precisely that same thing myself but hadn't been sure to what degree it might be generalized. It explained things. I found lots of good advice that I'm sure will be portable to the far more ordinary life I lead having nothing to do with the law but a lot to do with getting along with people around me and, on occasion, trying to persuade them to my point of view.
I also had a great time. The book was waiting for me Friday evening when I got home from work and by Saturday evening, I'd finished it completely. Along the way, I learned a lot and I also laughed a lot, out loud, probably every 4 or 5 minutes, at some new, insightful and humorously phrased observation about life or the law.
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