Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [180]
Clause 2 is likewise a platitude, and adds nothing to the analysis. Either the reader already believes freedom of speech is important, or he thinks it's overrated. In either case, the clause is useless.
Clause 3 does add something substantive: It points out that antimask laws can deter some people from speaking. But what “negative consequences” is the clause talking about? Do we usually say “He didn't want to speak out, because of a fear of negative consequences”?
No, we tend to be more concrete about what the negative consequences were—a fear of being fired, of being harassed by the police, of being ostracized by acquaintances, and so on. Such concrete examples are more vivid and more persuasive than a general statement about “negative consequences.”
A reader who just sees “negative consequences” might not be sure what that means, or might not imagine those consequences that we want him to think about: For instance, he might think of imprisonment, but conclude that this isn't something to worry about—if the speech is protected, he might reason, First Amendment law will shield people from being imprisoned for the speech, and if it's unprotected, then speakers ought to be deterred from engaging in such speech. And in any case, the reader will have to do extra work to translate the abstraction “negative consequences” into specific examples that he can visualize and evaluate.
Likewise, “unpopular speakers” is more abstract than it should be. Which speakers do we have in mind? Which speakers do we want the reader to have in mind? Even if the statement is true of all or most unpopular speakers, it would help if we can give some concrete examples that will help persuade the reader that this is a real problem that's likely to arise fairly often.
Clauses 4 and 6 likewise add something substantive—they suggest to readers that preventing crime is so important that it might sometimes justify even laws that deter speech. But they don't add much: This point is pretty obvious, and to the extent it's not obvious, it's better made by showing readers some crimes that antimask laws can cause, and leading the readers themselves to conclude that it's important to prevent those crimes. And this is even more true of clause 5 (“including crime facilitated by the wearing of masks”): Of course the paragraph means to include crime facilitated by the wearing of masks, but it ought to do this by actually describing how masks can facilitate crime.
Finally, sentence 7 is almost entirely redundant of clauses 4 and 6.
So here's a possible rewrite, shown alongside the original:
The general and the abstract have been replaced or supplemented by the concrete and the specific:
One concrete connection has been added: Instead of making the reader figure out how anti-mask laws lead to speech being “deterred by the fear of negative consequences,” the revised version now makes the causation clear—“If they are barred from wearing masks while demonstrating, the risk of retaliation may deter them from speaking.” This might not be strictly necessary, since it should be pretty obvious, but I think it's helpful.
At the same time, two generalities have been removed: “the freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights” and “the prevention of crime ... must surely be ranked as one of the more compelling of the possible government interests.” Such platitudes almost never persuade people. It seems to me that most readers will be much more persuaded by the concrete details in the revised version: the examples of unpopular speakers, and the examples of the crimes that they can cause.
B. Understand Your Source, p. 159
1. The quote said “[T]he annual accidental death toll for handgunrelated incidents is slightly under 200,” and referred to the Injury Facts excerpt that I reproduce below. Injury Facts lists 187 accidents as involving handguns, 93 as involving shotguns, 50 as involving hunting rifles, and 804 as involving “Other and unspecified firearm missile.”*
Thus, for most fatal gun accidents, the type of gun isn't reported, or the report isn't