Short

From my perspective, August is not the cruelest month like April, but the month to write my shortest column for the year. Many readers are away on vacation in August, and, likewise, my mind tends to vacation in August. Comments on where it is during the other 11 months of the year are not necessary. But I got fired up after reading Dan Lawton's column proposing that all judges should retire at age 75... the (reader's discretion to add adjective) nerve. So I wrote a long column for August.

Are not older people more likely to have experiences that give them insights to pass along to the young? Are not elderly people worthy of the appellation "venerable"? Reminds me of the Venerable Bede, who came to my attention when I was studying English history in college. I think he earned the title "Venerable" because, in the parlance of today's youth, he was one smart dude. 

To save you the trouble of looking him up, he was a famous teacher, scholar, and monk. This forestalls any comparison with me. Bede was born in 673, what scholars call "the early Middle Ages." He died in 735. But maybe we have something in common. Granted, I haven't died yet, but in those days, being alive for 61 years, maybe even 62 - who knows the month of his birth - was ancient. They didn't even have aspirin then.  A comparison with Methuselah might be an exaggeration, but I think it's apt. Methuselah is reputed to have lived longer than 900 years. Between us, I don't believe it. Please consider the comparison poetic license.

So now it's September, when school is in session and vacationers are home. Does the month call for a longer column?  Of course, that's nonsense. You've heard it before. One should write what is needed. Requires lots of editing. Caution, it is not advisable to use this column as the best example.  So longer or shorter is not always an apt distinction. But mostly, shorter is better. Think of the reader. 

For years, I have been on a soapbox calling for shorter opinions, shorter essays, shorter news articles, shorter columns and... shorter opinions, judicial and otherwise.

So why when I went to law school were judicial opinions usually shorter than the ones we read today? Consider how things were in the beginning of the sixties. That long ago? We didn't have cell phones to stare at while the professors scared the daylights (cliché in place of a far better word) out of us. When the venerable Dean Prosser called on you... me, you... I... froze, while other students breathed audible sighs of relief. From the Dean, "How would you apply the attractive nuisance rule in the Farnsworth case... Mr.... Gilbert? "I think blah blah ...." Interruption from the venerable Dean, "That's what you...think?" He turns to another student, "Mr. Bumble, what do you think of Mr. Gilbert's odd rambling thoughts?" I use the name "Bumble" because I know Dickens won't sue.

I have given lectures, let's call them talks, to law school classes now and then, and I have seen professors teach current law school classes.  Today should a professor offer a criticism of a student's performance, it is the professor who winds up in the dean's office. I judged a student moot court for a law class at a local university law school and pretended I was a federal judge. Those are the judges who do not have to run for reelection. It is hoped the students will be out of therapy in the next few years. 

Where were we? Oh yes, shorter opinions in the sixties. I didn't say better opinions, just shorter. In the glorious sixties we used typewriters. The IBM Selectric with the rotating ball and a roller instead of a moving horizontal carriage was popular. But correcting mistakes was still time-consuming. In those days typing the bar exam was an act of bravery. I wrote my answers.  I reasoned mistakes are less easy to detect in handwriting than in type. Nothing has changed.  My assistant Bonnie interprets my handwriting... for me.

The act of writing changed dramatically with word processing. In the early eighties, when I first became a justice on the Court of Appeal, we wrote our opinions on Wang word processors. I stared at my green Wang screen with the shaky horizontal line leading the way as I typed away. As I typed and typed and typed, a word in large bold letters flashed on the screen. The word was invisible to anyone looking over my shoulder, but I saw it. Epiphany! No, that was not the word, but that is what occurred after I saw the word.  The word was SHORTER.

Yes, word processors allow you to edit. Word processors make it easier to write short, tight, concise opinions for those who wish to give clear directions to readers like judges, litigants, and their attorneys telling them what they can and cannot do.

That's it. It's the day after Labor Day. I edited and edited and edited, and this is a short column.