{"id":512,"date":"2026-08-13T23:15:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=512"},"modified":"2026-08-13T23:15:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:15:03","slug":"once-upon-a-time-storytelling-in-learning-resources-v-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"Once upon a time: storytelling in Learning Resources v. Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Every fall, with each new class of 1Ls, we legal writing teachers undertake a strange job. We spend an entire year trying to get students to not<\/em> write like lawyers, a notoriously dreadful category of writers. In pursuit of that goal, we often target the bad qualities like jargon, legalese, word-wasting phrases, and other legal idiosyncrasies. But I think we\u2019d get better results if we started with what makes any writing \u201cgood\u201d \u2013 whether it is written by lawyers or by actual humans. As evidence, I would point to the Supreme Court\u2019s best writers, who deploy tactics often taught (and missed) in a good English composition class.<\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court expands protections for digital data \u2013 now what?<\/a><\/p>\n

Take Chief Justice John Roberts as an example. Flash back to November 2025: if you\u2019re Roberts, you\u2019ve got a problem \u2013 or at least a challenge. You\u2019ve just assigned yourself the majority opinion in . Now you must convince readers inside and outside the court that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act provides no authority for the one policy most important to this president: tariffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Never mind that the solicitor general has warned that your decision will provoke another Great Depression. Never mind that the outcome depends upon Talmudic esoterica unfamiliar to a politicized public \u2013 things like separation of powers, textualism, and the major questions doctrine.<\/p>\n

Beyond all that, you must communicate dreadful source material, especially to non-legal readers. Those readers must learn something of IEEPA itself, which clocks in at around 2,000 words of abstract text. Then, they need the content of the president\u2019s orders, which add almost 12,000 words, even without the appendices.<\/p>\n

So \u2026 what do you do?<\/p>\n

Roberts solves this problem by meeting the expectations of the ordinary, English-language reader. Apart from citations, he tells a 422-word story, and he does it with a tactic any writer can emulate: He uses actors as the subjects of most of his sentences. In a conflict over presidential power, Roberts makes the president the main character in a story, both in setting out IEEPA\u2019s requirements and in summarizing the president\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n

After an initial topic sentence about IEEPA, he puts the president \u2013 rather than the statute \u2013 in the subject position. He writes that, to satisfy IEEPA, \u201cthe President must identify\u201d a threat. Then, \u201che must declare\u201d an emergency. Then \u201che\u201d may \u201cregulate [. . . 16 words later . . .] importation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turning to the facts, the chief keeps the president \u2013 rather than his orders \u2013 in the spotlight. He practically ties the president to a chair at center stage. In the narrative, \u201cPresident Trump sought\u201d to address two, specific threats (\u201cThe first was the influx of illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico, and China,\u201d and \u201c[t]he second was \u2018large and persistent\u2019 trade deficits.\u201d). Roberts writes that the \u201cPresident determined\u201d the threats were serious. \u201cHe invoked\u201d his power under IEEPA. As required by the statute, \u201cPresident Trump declared\u201d the requisite emergency. \u201cHe then imposed\u201d tariffs, which \u201cthe President\u201d later changed when \u201che increased\u201d or \u201che removed\u201d tariffs. Later, \u201cthe President . . . shifted . . . goods into and out of\u201d the tariff regime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, in all the sentences he wrote for Section I.A of the opinion, the chief used an actor as the subject in all but five.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump administration asks SCOTUS to rule soon on mail-in voting<\/a><\/p>\n

In making that choice, the chief is not employing some tactic unique to \u201clegal\u201d writing, separate from ordinary English prose. Your old English composition teacher has long known the power of storytelling language. One such teacher, Joseph Willams, changed the way I wrote as a lawyer, and I love the way he put it. In the book Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, he focuses on what every reader needs from a writer. While readers look for action in the verbs, \u201cthey want characters as subjects even more.\u201d You erect tripping hazards for your reader when, \u201cfor no good reason,\u201d you \u201cfail to name characters in subjects, or worse, delete them entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most lawyers don\u2019t write this way. Most lawyers \u2013 even great ones \u2013 write more like the Congressional Research Service. , CRS covers essentially the same ground as the chief\u2019s 422-word story. But instead of a story, CRS offers up a report filled with tripping hazards. It force-feeds the reader five dense pages (10\u201314) of abstract prose, replete with footnotes.<\/p>\n

Where Roberts describes IEEPA by focusing on the president, CRS hangs a 56-word sentence on \u201cIEEPA empowers.\u201d Readers must then swallow a 50-word sentence hung on \u201cstatute provides.\u201d And the public is reminded that each \u201cnew threat . . . requires\u201d certain actions by the president. The coup de grace?<\/em> CRS treats readers to a dreadful block quote of IEEPA\u2019s central provisions.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the president does appear in the paragraphs discussing the tariff orders. But if Roberts ties the president to a chair, CRS permits him to wander on and off stage. In the president\u2019s absence, readers must content themselves with massive sentences about the \u201cJanuary Proclamation\u201d or the \u201cFebruary Executive Orders.\u201d Again, rather than a story, the reader must shoulder a bureaucratic tome \u2013 scrupulously accurate, no doubt, but abstract enough and long enough to avoid being read at all.<\/p>\n

The chief, in contrast, uses storytelling both to be read and to be understood, all while setting up his version of the question. Remember the story: The president issued barely related tariffs that swallowed the entire economy, then he changed them at random. But Congress wrote, \u201cregulate . . . [yadda, yadda, yadda] . . . importation.\u201d Based on this language, can a president really set tariffs \u201con imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time\u201d?<\/p>\n

Nope.<\/p>\n

So, how to write like the chief rather than like a lawyer? Prefer actors as subjects rather than concepts or abstractions like proclamations, orders, tariffs, separation of powers, or the major questions doctrine. Of course, \u201cprefer\u201d means you\u2019ll occasionally discover \u201cgood reason\u201d to abandon this approach, but not nearly as often as you think. For the moment, create drafts like you always do, then build in storytelling when you line edit.<\/p>\n

Use this process (adapted from Joseph Williams):<\/p>\n