
Why Clarence Thomas Uses Simple Words in His Opinions - duck
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/why-clarence-thomas-uses-simple-words-in-his-opinions/273326/#
======
tikhonj
Some of the best writers I know are ones whose style is deceptively clear and
simple. When reading something poorly written, like this comment, you have to
spend some some effort extracting the meaning from the words. These good
writers are effective because they manage to minimize this--reading something
simple and clear takes less mental effort and makes the content more
approachable and appealing, largely subconsciously.

My favorite example of a writer like this is Stallman. Whether I agree with or
disagree with any of his particular essays, they are always immensely
_readable_. His arguments are completely unobfuscated and easy to follow. His
work is worth reading if just to see how complicated legal and technical ideas
and arguments can be beautifully decomposed.

Now, this is certainly not the only way to be a great writer. Perhaps it is
not even a way to be the _greatest_ of writers. But it is very effective and,
importantly, relatively _subtle_. It is so subtle, in fact, that I think many
people do not recognize how much especial skill it takes and good it actually
is.

This sort of skill is particularly important for something like the law which
is inherently complex and tends to attract people very comfortable with such
complexity. Exposing it simply is crucial. More relevantly for HN, this sort
of skill is at least as useful for _technical_ topics. It's certainly
something everybody here should think about when writing.

~~~
RobertHoudin
I recently finished reading the Handbook of Technical Writing, by Gerald J.
Alred. It contains excellent advice on improving grammar, and avoiding jargon
and affectation in technical writing. I can highly recommend it.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250004411/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250004411/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1250004411&linkCode=as2&tag=blasday-20)
(referral link)

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250004411/> (non referral link)

~~~
tekromancr
offering a non referral link makes me way more likely to use your referral
link. Thanks!

------
rayiner
I'm not sure Thomas's opinions are the ones I'd hold up as paragons of clear
thought and clear writing, though he certainly does have a succinct style. One
of the things about legal writing is that you have to "show your work"--guide
the reader from accepted premise to conclusion via accepted authority. This is
necessarily a somewhat verbose process, and doing this thoroughly is somewhat
in tension with doing it succinctly.

I personally think Scalia's opinions are amazing, notwithstanding his habit of
writing very long inverted sentences. I'm not sure if they're the most
approachable for lay people, but they are incisively clear. "Hand-wavey" is
not a term that ever comes to mind reading Scalia's opinions (except when
talking about drugs or gays).

Richard Posner (7th Circuit) and Alex Kozinzki (9th Circuit) are also known
for their writing. I like this one from Kozinksi:
<http://notabug.com/kozinski/kremen_v_netsol>

~~~
bri3d
My favorite Kozinski work is the dissent in United States v. Pineda-Moreno:
[http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/08/12/08...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/08/12/08-30385.pdf)

~~~
nachteilig
Thanks for the link. That was a really fun read.

------
antiterra
Yet, it's possible to obfuscate and confuse with only simple words, even
unintentionally.

We're waiting on a Supreme Court ruling that could have significant impact on
first-sale that hinges on two plausible interpretations of the phrase "made
lawfully under this title."[1]

"First sale" itself is made up of two simple understandable words, but could
mean be any one of the sales that occur in the creation of a work. The words
themselves contain nothing that indicate whether it refers to the first sale
of a book to a publisher, a publisher to a store, a store to a person or a
person to another person.

"Assault" is a common word in every day usage, but in law it means something
very specific, it doesn't even require physical contact.

Even if someone succeeds in writing a law that makes perfect sense to
laypeople, it's possible that the apparent meaning will change or be lost in
the future. For an example of this, wade just ankle-deep into discussions of
the meaning of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

Phrases like " _sine qua non_ "[2] are pretty inaccessible, in that you might
need to look them up. However, being from a dead language, they may be less
likely to morph in meaning over time.

[1] [http://www.volokh.com/2012/05/08/some-baffling-copyright-
law...](http://www.volokh.com/2012/05/08/some-baffling-copyright-law/)

[2] Found in a Supreme Court opinion on copyright - Feist Pubs., Inc. v. Rural
Tel. Svc. Co., Inc. - 499 U.S. 340 (1991)
<http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/499/340/case.html>

~~~
einhverfr
> We're waiting on a Supreme Court ruling that could have significant impact
> on first-sale that hinges on two plausible interpretations of the phrase
> "made lawfully under this title."[1]

Not only that but Bowman v. Monsanto is another first sale case and it has to
do with whether the first sale of a soybean seed reaches the sale of the
soybean's offspring by sexual reproduction.

------
jstalin
There is a movement in the legal community toward using _plain English_.
Though, some think that doing so somehow reduces the quality of the legal
writing.

I was recently struck by how Google's terms of service are written in plain
English legal writing:

<https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/>

Compare a contract term like this, often referred to as a severability clause
(from Google's ToS): "If it turns out that a particular term is not
enforceable, this will not affect any other terms."

With this, in traditional legalese: "If any term or other provision of this
Agreement is determined to be invalid, illegal or incapable of being enforced
by any rule or law, or public policy, all other conditions and provisions of
this Agreement shall nevertheless remain in full force and effect so long as
the economic or legal substance of the transactions contemplated hereby is not
affected in any manner materially adverse to any party."

Both have the exact same effect.

~~~
jinushaun
But legalese _is_ plain English. It's verbose in order to eliminate ambiguity
and double meanings, not to be complex for complexity's sake.

~~~
DannyBee
Speaking as a lawyer, this is entirely false. The reason most legalese exists
is because most lawyers are bad at writing, and reuse blocks of text from
other lawyers who are bad at writing.

It is entirely possible to write plain and understandable english that is
legally unambiguous. As someone mentioned above, there has been a huge
movement towards this in law schools. It has had some impact, but it's still
going to be a long time.

That said, even some of the older folks in the legal field hate legalese. When
I clerked for an appeals court judge, we used to do two things: 1\. Read every
single opinion out loud to all the clerks in order to make sure it sounded
sane and was understandable to the other folks at the table, who had no idea
what the case was about. 2\. Remove all unnecessary words and anachronisms.
The judge used to pull out his copy of strunk and white and beat us over the
head with it.

~~~
einhverfr
And yet I have never seen a legal opinion to use the words "see above" or "see
below." They _always_ fall back on the Latin.

~~~
DannyBee
This is, AFAIK, because all of the standardized citation styles you could pick
from require it.

~~~
einhverfr
Is there any case though of a Supreme Court justice facing any consequences
for insisting on a non-standard citation style? What are they going to do,
impeach for writing clearly?

------
s_baby
Clarence's decision and the decision of many other politicians is likely the
product of Orwell's writing.

After reading Orwell's "Collection of Essays" I've been doing the same. In his
essay, "Politics and the English Language." Orwell boils down good writing to:

1\. “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used
to seeing in print.”

2\. “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

3\. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

4\. “Never use the passive where you can use the active.”

5\. “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can
think of an everyday English equivalent.”

6\. “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
(170)

edit: removed words

[http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2011/08/31/george-
orwel...](http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2011/08/31/george-orwell-on-
writing-well/)

~~~
igravious
I love that Orwell collection.

An entire collection of Martin Amis essays and book reviews is called 'The War
Against Cliché'[1] (your #1 above) because he too prioritizes resisting the
all-too-easy tendency to rely on tired worn-out phrases. I have noticed that
tabloid papers lean on this style of language more than traditional
broadsheets - for me it is this (deliberate) literary lazy folksiness that
sets them apart rather than mere content. Note Amis puts an elitist accent on
cliché breaking Orwell's #5 but I like it because it reminds us that it is
cleeshay rather than cleesh and I am not afraid of foreign tongues :)

Philosophy is another area (besides law) rife with jargon and, if I may say,
prolixity. It is an area here care is rarely taken to express oneself plainly
and simply. Schopenhauer has an essay called simply enough 'On Style'[2] which
starts out "Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to
character than the face.". I use this as a guiding light. Some philosophers
are too important to avoid regardless of style (Hegel, Kant, Luhmann) but I am
always and everywhere suspicious of any who are too verbose and needlessly
opaque (Quine springs to mind). This is why I love Nietzsche so much, whatever
you may say about his ideas - my God - his turn of phrase is sublime.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_Clich%C3%A9>

[2]
[http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/cont...](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/contents.html)

~~~
s_baby
I approach influential works of philosophy as being analogous to mathematical
proofs. It requires precision of language and verbosity for rigor. But just
like math you don't need to read the proof to get the idea. I understand the
idea of an integral and derivative despite the fact I cannot fully understand
the proofs deriving these ideas. I can talk your ear off on Hegel despite
never fully reading his work. That just wouldn't be a good use of my time.

On the other hand thinkers like Derrida are obscure and practically require an
understanding of Ancient Greek to say anything "authoritative". I think it
leads to all sorts of hand-wavy interpretations.

------
shill
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words,
a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing
should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This
requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid
all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

\--William Strunk Jr., Elements of Style

~~~
Avshalom
Which has always struck me as hilarious advice considering that second and
third sentences in the paragraph are unnecessary.

~~~
kscaldef
The second sentence explains and justifies the first. The third refines and
clarifies. If you hold that it suffices to merely authoritatively assert a
claim, then they are unnecessary, but the point of the third sentence is that,
in fact, it doesn't.

------
chrisbennet
I think people are so intent on the style of their communication that
sometimes forget that they are writing something in order to _communicate_.

Today I was discussing a reminder email ("You have an appointment coming up!")
from my dentist - it had pretty pictures but lacked the date and time of the
oppointment.

We've all seen web sites with flashy graphics but no contact info and/or how
to buy what they are selling.

~~~
cjdrake
I really wish more lawyers would think this way. Every bill passed in Congress
nowadays is hundreds or even thousands of pages long, and filled with
incomprehensible legal language.

It's as if the text itself is intended to _obscure_ the meaning, rather than
explain it.

~~~
Avshalom
It takes millions of lines of incomprehensible computer language to do
something as trivial as "browse the web".

Now imagine the task is "defining the lives of 300 million people a
significant fraction of which is actively engaged in attempting to find any
loop hole" and think how many lines THAT would take.

~~~
colomon
So you imagine that the more text there is in a law, the less likely there is
to be a loophole? Do you also think that longer programs have fewer bugs?

------
mvanveen
It occurs to me that as members and professionals within the technical
community, hackers have just as much of a responsibility to use plain English
when communicating with stakeholders and laypeople as members of the law
community.

Often, I find it extremely hard to distill a technical concept down to the
basic takeaway. It's a skill I've been flexing for years now, and yet I still
feel the need to drastically simplify my explanations. It often doesn't seem
fair. To bear the burden of consolidating an ocean of understanding into a few
word summary your stakeholder can grok sometimes seems impossible!

Nevertheless, I think Clarence Thomas sets an awesome example which really
puts it in perspective for me. As people who are trying to deliver results to
our stakeholders, we owe it them to explain what we're doing for them in as
plain and simple language as we can muster.*

*note: I totally acknowledge that this is a difficult skill which can take a fair amount of practice. Not saying I am personally perfect or even great at this skill. I'm just saying it's an important one to work on!

~~~
einhverfr
What do you mean by plain english though? If I am talking to an accountant I
use different words and levels of detail than if I am talking to the person in
charge of network security, and very different still from if I am talking with
a 10 year old.

The problem as I see it is that "plain English" doesn't really exist in any
objective sense. We all speak different versions of the language depending on
who we are talking to.

Indeed if you think about it, a lot of computing and programming terms are
quite readily understandable to an imaginative layperson. Words like "stack"
or "pipe" are pretty clear metaphors for existing every-day concepts and in
fact when I introduce concepts like "heap" or "stack" I always use everyday
example, like a stack of books....

> Nevertheless, I think Clarence Thomas sets an awesome example which really
> puts it in perspective for me. As people who are trying to deliver results
> to our stakeholders, we owe it them to explain what we're doing for them in
> as plain and simple language as we can muster.*

Thomas is one of those justices who, whatever you think of his preferred views
on jurisprudence, is both an impressive writer and an impressive speaker and
someone I am happy to see on the court even when I disagree with him.

------
hudibras
Good article, but it's a bit of a straw man argument. Supreme Court opinions
have a distinctive style that tends towards plain English. You can pick almost
any opinion (majority or dissenting) at random and a layman will be able to
follow along.

However, the Supreme Court is _sui generis_ ; basically almost all other legal
opinions are written quickly and opaquely. There's little incentive for judges
to write beautifully if only a handful of people are going to care about the
decision--especially when those people have lawyers available to interpret the
opinion for them.

------
jgrahamc
Many people recommend books that describe how to write using simple words. I
recommend reading E. B. White's "Charlotte's Web". E. B. White is the White in
Strunk and White. "Charlotte's Web" illustrates the ideas in Strunk and White
while being an enjoyable story.

In the story Charlotte saves the pig's life by writing the words "Some Pig" in
her web. I've always thought that sentence exemplified Strunk and White's
suggestions. It's just two simple and short words.

------
nchlswu
I was always under the assumption that plain english was avoided because being
succinct can leave things open to interpretation. This would leaves legal
documents up for debate and open to loopholes.

Am I wrong in this assumption?

I often find myself writing things that are too verbose in fear that I won't
be interpreted as intended. I recognize that this is an inherent challenge in
writing, but is there any intermediate solution? Can there not be a "plain
language" version of a document? Or why can't legal documents be primarily
written in plain language, with notes (like footnotes) for legal
clarification?

~~~
hammock
You might be. Think of it in this way: the more you write, the more ideas are
offered for your audience to interpret - and misinterpret. Shorter writing can
be clearer, if written well.

------
jivatmanx
I'd like to plug the simple English Wikipedia
<http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page> as it's helped me recently with a
few math concepts that I couldn't quite understand from the normal Wikipedia.

~~~
hudibras
Wikipedia is a great first stop for almost every subject under the sun--except
for medical issues and mathematics. In both those cases, it seems like
procrastinating medical students or math grad students try to out-do each
other with more and more esoteric details and jargon.

------
chewxy
I have a severe problem regarding this: my writing and indeed my explanation
are often very verbose, and more often than not, filled with jargon.

I had been for a very long time, a believer that jargon simplifies
communication because a lot of information is encapsulated in jargon. However
I have come to believe, recently, that I could not have been more wrong.

Any idea how to simplify my communications? I'm starting to blog a bit more
again, and I would really like to reach a wider audience on economic thinking

~~~
marklabedz
Two techniques that I've used: 1. Read good writing. 2. After writing your own
work, force yourself to leave it for week. Only after that week, edit. (Blog
posts are particularly suited to #2.)

------
tjic
I picked up his autobiography

[http://www.amazon.com/My-Grandfathers-Son-A-
Memoir/dp/B003H4...](http://www.amazon.com/My-Grandfathers-Son-A-
Memoir/dp/B003H4RB8K)

on a whim.

...and was quite impressed by it, and by him. I don't agree with all of his
political or legal stances, but I had no doubt after reading it that he has a
first class mind, and thinks deeply and clearly about things

------
ErrantX
What a fascinating chap. I wish I could write/speak with the sort of clarity
he has, even in such short comments.

I realise he mentions that this clarity comes from heavy editing, but he also
seems to have a very clear and organised way of thinking (perhaps from all
those years of sifting through law...).

My favourite writer has always been Douglas Adams because he managed to
combine effortlessly clear prose with comedy. I highly recommend "The Salmon
of Doubt", a posthumously published collection of his short essays/articles.

My favourite is about Frank the electrician, in which rants in tandem about
the his tangled mess of computer wires and his electrician, who has a
delightful habit of destroying newly plastered walls and cutting the power off
at inopportune moments.

As an example of stream of conciousness comedy writing (with an underlying,
clear, message) it is peerless.

------
spikels
Reading this, an earlier article on DC's laws being copyrighted by a private
firm (link below) and Aaron Swartz's FBI file make me think how inaccessible
our government really is. Not only is it hard to even find the relevant laws
or even worse court decisions once you read them they are often
incomprehensible.

Can't the government afford to put this on the web in an easily usable form?
Perhaps annotated with at least their own interpretation of the meaning. Don't
they need this to function?

Could there be some sort of open-source effort by lawyers to solve this
problem?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5251797>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5247730>

------
hakaaaaak
"...the genius is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It's to
put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence."

That 200:1 value to cost ratio is good advice.

You're going to make a killing if the customer perceived value to price ratio
is 200:1, and if the retail price to cost ratio is also 200:1.

------
cpeterso
In the mid-19th century, an author named Lucy Aikin (using the pen name Mary
Godolphin) wrote a number of children's novels using words of just one
syllable, including versions of "Robin Crusoe" and "Swiss Family Robinson".
Every word, save for proper names, had only one syllable.

[http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2008/04/monosyl...](http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2008/04/monosyllabic-
monographs-of-antediluvian.html)

For those interested in taking this challenge, here's a list of over 6000
monosyllabic English words. This is a surprisingly difficult exercise!
Unfortunately, the writing style is very staccato.

<http://www.one-syllable-words.com/>

------
hexonexxon
John Ralston Saul has written extensively about the dictatorship of vocabulary
and how it is important to write in clear everyday language instead of the
technocratic babble of an expert. Voltaire didn't write crypto books only the
elite could understand

------
droithomme
Many pivotal Supreme Court decisions are delightful to read in part due to
their clear and elegantly straightforward language and reasoning. And always
with extensive citations!

I can't say the same for the majority of web site usage and software licenses
I've read, most of which will require tremendous effort for any court to
interpret should there be a dispute.

I am a fan of Thomas' dissent in Kelo v New London.
(<http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/04-108P.ZD1>)

------
Shivetya
On a related note, I have read one line here a few times that is very similar.

I did not have time to write a shorter comment.

Far too many of us ramble, we do not take the time to focus our thoughts. This
results in replies that just go on and on repeating the same thought in as
many ways.

While I like Clarence Thomas, having read his books and some about him, I do
not always like his decisions but at least I have a chance at understanding
them

------
lobo_tuerto
From the article: "... With that fascinating segue, he explained the logic
behind his writing ..."

From wikipedia: "A segue (i/ˈsɛɡweɪ/) is a smooth transition from one topic or
section to the next. The term is derived from Italian segue, "it follows"; the
pronunciation in English differs from the original Italian pronunciation."

Oh, the irony.

~~~
smcnally
What's ironic in it? He took the story from a quadraplegiac friend who had
trouble with a curb and "transitioned smoothly to another topic" about dense
language being a curb-like barrier for some.

Or you refer to the word "segue" itself? Justice Thomas is claiming
simplicity; The Atlantic author is not.

~~~
lobo_tuerto
Yes, the word "segue" itself.

Not arguing about Justice Thomas, but the Atlantic author writing about that
subject, then showing no empathy with Justice's POV? I found that a bit
ironic.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is the most inspiring video I've seen all year. I continue to be amazed
at how really decent people can "rub off" on the rest of us.

Thank you very much for sharing it.

------
saturdaysaint
My dad likes to say "English is the most powerful programming language."
(offhandedly, so "English" is shorthand for "spoken language")

------
jjclarkson
I thought it of great interest that he was open enough to share that he uses
Goodreader on his iPad.

------
brownbat
I feel like I've heard Scalia give this exact answer...

