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Legal Style Blog

@legalstyle.co.uk

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A web-log on legal style, with a focus on England & Wales. Also home of the ‘In the Privy Council’ podcast and the novelty @tritelaw.bsky.social account. Editor: Mr Elijah Z Granet @ezgra.net. Web: legalstyle.co.uk ; e-mail: editor [at] legalstyle.co.uk

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Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Aug 12

Leopold v. Levin, 259 N.E.2d 250 (Ill. Sup. Ct. 1970).
The film, which is excellent (as is the roman à clef on which it's based by Meyer Levin) featuring Orson Welles reading Clarence Darrow's actual majestic peroration, can be watched in full here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4bf...

Compulsion (1959) | Classic Movie Full HD | Bradford Dillman, Dean Stockwell, Orson Welles

YouTube video by CINÉMOI

www.youtube.com

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Aug 12

In "annals of legal chutzpah," murderer Leopold (of "& Loeb" fame) sued to stop a film à clef (COMPULSION, a fave) about his crime, saying the fictionalized aspects hurt him in the community. Ill. Sup. Ct.: you murdered a kid; there's no fiction about you that worsens your rep.

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Aug 7

doctrinally, what happened to Charles I was regicide and the High Court of Justice trying him genuinely did have no authority.

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Aug 7

Even with the vagary on how you define the Crown, which is a matter of acknowledged doctrinal inconsistency, I think the answer is clearly firmly no. though as bodies corporate there are public entities that can be criminally liable.

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Aug 7

See also Wade, Forsyth, & Ghosh, Administrative Law, 12 edn at 664 (noting that the situation regarding costs in such a proceeding is unclear)

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Aug 7

Fascinated to learn that, though not common, it remains possible to bring a common law petition of right as a remedy in contract against the King in situations not covered by the Crown Proceedings Act 1947. Franklin v Attorney General [1974] QB 185, 201, HC per Lawson J.

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

This makes it annoying for someone who is not a weirdo style obsessive (i.e., not like me) who might not realize there are plenty of references!

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

The biggest practical point of this is actually distinctly digital, because if you wanted to search a recent Supreme Court opinion for "MS-13" you'd get 0 results because the computer only finds "MS–13".

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

Usually three hyphens default changed? But never to an en-dash?

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

so

"This—the law—is bad"
becomes under JT's rules (for Penguin Books and behind the beautiful redesign that makes their paperbacks so wonderful to this day!)

"This – the law – is bad"

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

I think every non-federal style guide is fairly consistent that en-dash is for range of numbers. One of the few outliers on en-dashes is for that Jan Tschichold's advice in his legendary 1948 guide to typographers to use the en-dash with spaces instead of the em-dash

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

This came up a lot in visa debates because only by knowing that the federal government approach (mostly via the GPO) is for en-dashes, no one would possibly guess that the visa is H–1B (hyphen) not H-1B (hyphen).

Even worse that visa name references now repealed legislative organizing

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

On iPhone, press and hold the hyphen and then move right once for en-dash (–) and twice for em-dash (—)

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 19

Looked this up out of curiosity and it's fascinating when states (here Ohio and Oregon) insist on terms no other state uses. What other examples are there of a state using a unique name for a common offense, procedure, or law?

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 17

Just cite Arkell v Pressdram and be done with it
(google it!)

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 17

In keeping with the GPO style guide, the Supreme Court uses an en-dash (–) not a hyphen (-) in MS–13 (so it's not MS-13). It's an odd quirk of federal style

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Apr 12

If you want to really annoy a lawyer, just try citing bits from law reports like you would any other book chapter ;)

$Burger, Warren E. “Wisconsin v. Yoder.” \emph{United States Reports: Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court}, edited by Henry Putzel, Jr., vol. 406, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1973, pp. 207–236. \end{hangparas}$

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 29

bsky.app/profile/did:...

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 29

The official proclamation of Australia's dissolution is not befitting the great Commonwealth… so I re-typeset it! God save the King of Australia! Pathetic original below

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 29

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 29

The official proclamation of Australia's dissolution is not befitting the great Commonwealth… so I re-typeset it! God save the King of Australia! Pathetic original below

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 29

heheh

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 16

There's a lot of debate on the best list format for law. Some people like Roman (I,II, III or i, ii, iii), others alpha (a, b, c), others numeric (1, 2, 3). I, however, prefer the bra size method of listing, which I think is the clearest way to tabulate.

Reposted by Legal Style Blog

Robert Sharp @robertsharp.bsky.social · Mar 15

Flipping through Family Law textbook, an area that necessarily has a lot of anonymised case. But there are no less than 57 citations with the title ‘Re: A’.

Petition to adopt the @legalstyle.co.uk suggestion of deploying full throated pseudonyms in www.legalstyle.co.uk/2022/12/styl...

Styling family cases

Don't put the generic titles in the styling

www.legalstyle.co.uk

Legal Style Blog @legalstyle.co.uk · Mar 13

A few excerpts from one of my favourite essays (always a delight to return to), L. Sprague de Camp’s “Language for Time Travellers”

Reposted by Legal Style Blog

Trite Law 🇬🇧 @tritelaw.bsky.social · Mar 12

'It is trite to say that merely preferring one party's case to that advanced by the other cannot, of itself, give rise to a sustainable claim of apparent bias.' In re Haberlin's Appl'n [2025] NIKB 13, ¶ 33, KBD per Humphreys J.
www.bailii.org/nie/cases/NI...

Haberlin, Re Application for Judicial Review [2025] NIKB 13 (27 February 2025)