Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [26]
3. frame the issue; and
4. do all this quickly and forcefully.
B. Show That There's a Problem, and Do So Concretely
Your introduction should make the reader think, “wow, I need to read the rest of this.” The best way to get that reaction is to show that there's an important, interesting problem that needs to be solved. This could be a descriptive problem (does this law work? how did this legal rule come about?) or a prescriptive one (what should be done in these situations?). But whatever it is, you need to persuade readers that they should spend their time reading about this problem.
And the most compelling problems are concrete ones. Don't just say that the law is unjust or oppressive, or ignores transaction costs or the plight of the subordinated. Give a specific example—a real scenario is good, but a plausible hypothetical is fine too—that shows how the law can fail. Make the reader say, “interesting, it looks like the law here is unsound” or “I wonder what the right answer is.”
This, of course, is related to demonstrating your claim's utility (see below), but it's important in its own right: It makes people want to read what you wrote.
C. State the Claim
The Introduction should briefly state the claim, and briefly show its novelty, nonobviousness, and utility. This tells the readers what to expect, and persuades them that your article will make a valuable original contribution by solving the problem as well as identifying it.
Note the “briefly.” The Introduction should be short, simple, and clear. It should make the reader want to read further, but it should also simply and memorably communicate your basic point—and the other interesting conclusions that you draw in the process of reaching it—even to those readers who will never read beyond the Introduction.
The best way to show novelty and nonobviousness is implicitly, by briefly explaining your claim and justification in a way that makes the reader say, “I'd never have thought of that.” But if you think people might wrongly assume that your topic has already been heavily discussed, and that your claim has already been made by someone else, you might explicitly say something like “surprisingly, it turns out that few scholars have considered [the question].”
Utility is also best shown implicitly: Saying “this is a really useful point” will rarely add much to your argument. Instead, make sure that your introduction clearly summarizes your important findings, and their possible practical and theoretical implications.
D. Frame the Issue
Every law has many effects. In an ideal world, readers' judgments about the law would be the same no matter how the question is presented, because readers would consider all the effects. But in practice, the frame—the way you present the issue to the readers, and focus their attention on certain effects—is important.
Consider an article about gun control. Thinking seriously about gun control requires thinking about many things: The thousands of people who die each year from gunshots. The plight of people who need a weapon to defend themselves against criminal attacks when the police aren't there to help. The special concerns of women, who tend to be physically less capable of defending themselves without guns, and who are victimized in particular ways by crime. The Second Amendment and state constitutional provisions that guarantee a right to keep and bear arms. The uncertainty about how useful guns are for self-defense. The uncertainty about how effective gun controls would be.
Your article will have to confront all these subjects, whatever your bottom line will be; but it matters a lot how you frame the discussion. If you start by stressing that there were almost 13,000 firearms homicides in the U.S. in 2006,7 and return to this throughout the piece, the reader will be more likely to look at all the evidence through this lens. If you start by stressing that the police are often far away, and that hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of people use guns to defend themselves against criminal attacks