On October 22, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a ruling that, while primarily focusing on a rather mundane regulation, also gave an amusing jolt to the legal world. The ruling addressed the grievance of an attorney who had argued that the court rules on brief formatting were unfairly prohibiting the use of double-spacing.
The conventional wisdom within the legal profession, it seems, had long been that double-spacing documents would allow for many more arguments to be packed into the page-limited briefs regularly filed with the court. The legal world had been rife with these sort of procedural adjustments in an effort to cram more words onto a page.
However, in his ruling, Judge Duncan declared, “Lawyers don’t need more words on a page to make their points.” He further exhorted attorneys to respect the court’s formatting rules saying that if jurists everywhere were to allow such manipulations, the page limit as a constraint to verbosity would become meaningless.
This ruling has provoked a significant amount of chatter among legal professionals as it seem to touch on broader questions about the use and abuse of court procedures and time-honoured traditions in legal writing. Yet, it serves as a stark reminder that although these debates rage on in the legal sphere, it’s ultimately the judges who will establish and enforce the rules of the game.