
The Art and Craft of Judgment Writing, Second Edition
A Primer for Common Law Judges
Published: 2025
Pages: 680
eBook: 9781837230723
In this second edition of The Art and Craft of Judgment Writing, Max Barrett, an experienced and practising judge working in Ireland, will not only enhance your judgment writing skills but elevate them to a new level of clarity, precision and style.
Subjects new to the second edition:
The use (and misuse) of artificial intelligence in judgment writing. Stay ahead of the curve as AI begins to influence legal writing.
Visual aids in judgments: learn how diagrams, graphs and infographics can make judgments more comprehensible and memorable.
Effective use of precedent: read about the challenging balance between being thorough and overwhelming your readers.
The power of storytelling: discover how narrative techniques can make your judgments clearer and more powerful.
Structured writing and editing: develop a process that ensures your judgments are well-organised and polished.
Proper use of footnotes and gender-inclusive language: enhance the professionalism and inclusivity of your work.
Collaborative judgment-writing: understand better the dynamics of working on a judgment-writing team.
With more real-world examples from case law, a 'key learnings and question' section with each chapter to help judges turn theory into practice and an entirely new exploration of what great fiction writers have taught about writing, The Art and Craft of Judgment Writing is not just a book: it's a roadmap to becoming a better writer and a more effective judge.
Table of Contents
Cover | Cover | |
---|---|---|
Title Page | 1 | |
Copyright | 2 | |
Contents | 3 | |
Preface | 5 | |
Foreword | 9 | |
Part I: Key topics | 13 | |
1. On judgments | 15 | |
2. Judgments: purpose and audience | 31 | |
3. Judgment length | 43 | |
4. Judgment style | 53 | |
5. Structured writing | 99 | |
6. Dissenting and concurring judgments | 133 | |
7. Children, families, asylum seekers and immigrants | 151 | |
8. Redaction, pseudonymisation and anonymisation | 167 | |
9. The art and craft of ex tempore judgments | 177 | |
Part II: Some specific aspects of judgment writing | 191 | |
10. Writing and researching a judgment using AI | 193 | |
11. The ethics of using AI in judgment writing | 209 | |
12. Visual aids | 223 | |
13. Storytelling | 241 | |
14. Using previous authorities | 257 | |
15. Editing | 267 | |
16. Footnotes | 281 | |
17. Collaborative judgment writing | 295 | |
18. Gender-inclusive language | 303 | |
Part III: Some renowned judges and their writing | 311 | |
19. Three renowned women judges: Justices O’Connor, Ginsburg and Wilson | 313 | |
20. Three renowned American judges: Justices Holmes, Jackson and Scalia | 341 | |
21. Three renowned 20th-century British judges: Lords Atkin, Denning and Bingham | 371 | |
22. Three renowned 19th-century British judges: Bramwell, Blackburn and Willes | 401 | |
23. Some renowned judges from the wider common law world | 417 | |
Part IV: Some lessons from talented writers | 447 | |
24. Introduction to Part IV | 449 | |
25. Barbauld | 453 | |
26. Besant | 457 | |
27. Conrad | 461 | |
28. Crawford | 465 | |
29. De Maupassant | 471 | |
30. De Quincey | 477 | |
31. Forster | 483 | |
32. Hardy | 487 | |
33. The Hawthornes | 491 | |
34. Hazlitt | 497 | |
35. Howells | 501 | |
36. James | 507 | |
37. Johnson | 513 | |
38. Lawrence | 521 | |
39. Lewes | 525 | |
40. Lewis | 531 | |
41. Matthews | 535 | |
42. Maugham | 539 | |
43. Orwell | 543 | |
44. Pater | 549 | |
45. Poe | 553 | |
46. Raleigh | 559 | |
47. Saintsbury | 565 | |
48. Schopenhauer | 571 | |
49. Spencer | 577 | |
50. Stevenson | 583 | |
51. Thompson | 589 | |
52. Trollope | 595 | |
53. Twain | 599 | |
54. Wharton | 605 | |
55. Woolf | 613 | |
56. Towards a code of good judgment writing | 621 | |
Bibliography | 623 | |
Cases cited | 659 | |
Index | 665 | |
About the author | 679 | |
About Globe Law and Business | 680 |
The Honourable Mr Justice Max Barrett is a judge of the High Court of Ireland. He holds a degree in law from Trinity College Dublin, a first-class master's in competition law from King's College London, a PhD in law from the University of Salford (having won a full scholarship) and a first-class master?s in children's literature from Dublin City University. He also holds a variety of postgraduate diplomas on various aspects of law. He has written and spoken widely on all manner of legal topics.
When not lawyering or writing, Max is a keen amateur watercolourist.