Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [8]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Laurence Abraham, Bruce Adelstein, Alison Anderson, Stuart Banner, David Behar, Stuart Benjamin, Paul Bergman, David Binder, Julie Marie Blake, Andrew Brady, Dan Bussel, Stephen Calkins, Dennis Callahan, Paul Cassell, Michael Cernovich, Chris Cherry, Larry Dougherty, Jason Dreibelbis, Joseph Fishman, Cassandra Franklin, Eric Freedman, Dana Gardner, Jim Gardner, Bryan Garner, Ken Graham, Sharon Gold, Kendall Hannon, Justin Hughes, Sera Hwang, Alan Kabat, Brian Kalt, Pam Karlan, Orin Kerr, Ken Klee, Kris Knaplund, Adam Kolber, Mae Kuykendall, Terri LeClercq, Sandy Levinson, Nancy Levit, Jacob Levy, Jim Lindgren, Dan Lowenstein, Elaine Mandel, Jonathan Miller, Michael Mulvania, Steve Munzer, Michael O'Donnell, Steve Postrel, Deborah Rhode, Stephen Rynerson, Greg Schwinghammer, David Sklansky, Bill Somerfeld, Clyde Spillenger, Chris Stone, Lauren Teukolsky, Suja Thomas, Martin Totaro, Rebecca Tushnet, Hanah Metchis Volokh, Sasha Volokh, Vladimir Volokh, Alysa Wakin, Bruce Wessel, Ziggy Williamson, Neal Wilson, Virginia Wise, Steve Yeazell, Tung Yin, and Amy Zegart for their advice; to the UCLA Law Library staff—especially Laura Cadra, Xia Chen, Maureen Dunnigan, Kevin Gerson, June Kim, Jennifer Lentz, Cynthia Lewis, Linda Karr O'Connor, and John Wilson—for all their help; and to Sara Cames, Michael Devine, and Leib Lerner for their thoughtful and thorough editing, proofreading, and cite-checking. And, of course, my deepest thanks to Judge Alex Kozinski, who taught me most of what I know about legal writing.
I. FINDING WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT (THE CLAIM)
Good legal scholarship should make (1) a claim that is (2) novel, (3) nonobvious, (4) useful, (5) sound, and (6) seen by the reader to be novel, nonobvious, useful, and sound.*
This is true whether the author is a student, a young lawyer, a seasoned expert, or an academic. I will sometimes allude below to student authors (since I expect that most readers of this book will be students), for instance by discussing grades or faculty advisors. But nearly all of this book should apply equally to other aspiring academic writers.
A. The Claim
1. Your basic thesis
Most good works of original scholarship have a basic thesis—a claim they are making about the world. This could be a descriptive claim about the world as it is or as it was (such as a historical assertion, a claim about a law's effects, or a statement about how courts are interpreting a law). It could be a prescriptive claim about what should be done (such as how a law or a constitutional provision should be interpreted, what new statute should be enacted, or how a statute or a common-law rule should be changed). It could also be a combination of both a descriptive claim and a prescriptive one. In any case, you should be able to condense that claim into one sentence, for instance:
1. “Law X is unconstitutional because ....”
2. “The legislature ought to enact the following statute: ....”
3. “Properly interpreted, this statute means ....”
4. “This law is likely to have the following side effects ....”
5. “This law is likely to have the following side effects ..., and therefore should be rejected or modified to say ....”
6. “Courts have interpreted the statute in the following ways ..., and therefore the statute should be amended as follows ....”
7. “Several different legal rules are actually inconsistent in certain ways, and this inconsistency should lead us to ....”
8. “My empirical research shows that this legal rule has unexpectedly led to ..., and it should therefore be changed this way ....”
9. “My empirical research shows that this law has had the following good effects ..., and should therefore be kept, or extended to other jurisdictions.”
10. “Viewing this law from a [feminist/Catholic/economic] perspective leads