Posted by Orin Kerr:
Bad Legal Writing -- In This Case, My Own:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_02_12-2006_02_18.shtml#1140127074
I was looking through some old articles recently, and I came across a
reprint of my first law review article. It was an empirical study of
the Chevron doctrine in administrative law, written when I was a law
student and published the year after I graduated. My judgment today:
interesting ideas, but terrible writing. Take this doozy of a
paragraph:
The large body of literature on the Chevron doctrine draws
primarily from three distinct models of how the doctrine functions
in practice. Each model presents a jurisprudential paradigm in
which a particular set of factors is believed to alter the chances
that reviewing courts will uphold agency interpretations of
statutory law. Because more than one set of factors can affect the
outcomes of Chevron cases, these models are not mutually exclusive:
Several might be needed to explain patterns of judicial outcomes
accurately. However, despite their ability to function
simultaneously, the three paradigms are conceptually very
different. This part discusses the three models in detail, focusing
on the theoretical assumptions that inform them and the empirical
claims that these assumptions produce.
Why was I saying everything twice? Can I get any wordier? And did I
actually write the phrase "jurisprudential paradigm"? Eeks.
If I could rewrite it today, I think I would replace it with
something more like this:
The Chevron literature offers three descriptive models of what
factors influence the outcomes of the Chevron test. This part
explores the three models, focusing on their assumptions and the
results they predict judges will reach.
Still not great, but better.
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