Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges
am 02.05.2008 von Jurabilis
Perhaps the most annoying of all responses to a judges question is this: Your Honor, Ill get to that point later. First,
. Go where the court wants you to go! Besides offending the courts dignity, you invite the judge to conclude (as most will) that you have no effective response. And you invite suspicion that the promised later will never come. (Justice John M. Harlan asserted that the usual result of a postponed answer was a never-addressed question.) At the very least the questioner is distracted from your ensuing discussion, waiting eagerly for that to be done with and for the question to be addressed. As elegantly described by Ben W. Palmer, a Minneapolis practitioner of the mid-20th century, Everything you may say thereafter may be suspended in the air like a levitated body or more likely a corpsethe corpse of your dead case.
When following our advice not to postpone an answer, refrain from saying something like, Your Honor, I was planning to address that point later on, but since you ask I shall come to it at once.
Frankly, the court doesnt care a fig whether you were …
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