Style
There is a key stylistic difference between the U.S. on the one hand, and the UK and other common law countries on the other. In the U.S., the disposition of an appeal in a majority opinion is usually drafted in the present tense, so that the disposition is itself a performative utterance. That is, a U.S. court will say that "we affirm (or reverse)" the lower court's decision, or, "the decision of the is hereby affirmed (or reversed)." By saying so, the court actually does so.
In the UK and many other common law countries, the disposition in a majority opinion is phrased in the future tense. For example, the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom end a majority opinion by stating that "I would dismiss the appeal" or "I would allow the appeal," while the Justices of the High Court of Australia end a majority opinion by stating that "the appeal should be dismissed" or "the appeal should be allowed." This makes little sense from the American perspective, since the appeal has already occurred.
American dissenting and concurring opinions are sometimes partially drafted in the future tense, since they are speaking in terms of hypothetical situations that will not actually occur, as opposed to what the majority is actually doing in its opinion. However, even dissenting opinions may end in a present tense performative utterance, which is usually some variation on the phrase "I respectfully dissent."
Read more about this topic: Majority Opinion
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)