Judicial Writing- A Benchmark for the Bench
₦25,000.00
Judicial Writing: A Benchmark for the Bench, is an intensive, challenging, and highly interactive program with a Keynote presentation, a book of the same title, and other training materials. It will teach judges, magistrates, and other decision writers the art and science of judicial writing.
Description
COURSE DESCRIPTION
To validate their institutional continuance as a branch of government, judges and magistrates must make sound decisions. They must also articulate and express those decisions efficiently and comprehensibly.
Judicial Writing: A Benchmark for the Bench demonstrates how to attain mastery in judicial writing. The program will help judges, magistrates, arbitrators, and other decision-writers master the art and science of judicial writing.
Course Objectives
Judicial Writing: A Benchmark for the Bench will enable you reach just and sound decisions by:
- sharpening your analytical skills;
- honing your issue-spotting acumen; and
- deepening your precedent-application prowess.
Target audience
- Arbitrators
- Grand Kadis and Kadis
- Judges in Federal High Courts, High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, and State High Courts
- Judges in the National Industrial Court
- Judicial Assistants
- Justices of the Supreme Court
- Justices of the Court of Appeal
- Justices of the Customary Court of Appeal and Sharia Court of Appeal
- Magistrates
- Tribunal Judges and Commissioners
Course Content
Thanks for your interest in Judicial Writing: A Benchmark for the Bench.
The course features the following:
- Introduction
- Anatomy of a Judgment
- Issues for determination (Reformulate the issues and answer them with reasons)
- The Introduction (Write an executive summary)
- Facts and Procedural History (Narrate the pertinent facts and procedural history: recount only information relevant to your analysis of the outcome)
- Analysis and Discussions (Analyze, discuss, and synthesize the parties’ arguments, authorities, evidence, facts, and law. Explain your reasoning and point to your conclusion.)
- Conclusion and Disposition (Close your decisions by granting, modifying, or refusing relief,; issuing directions; or remanding the case.)
- Logic and Clear Thought
- Language and Style
At the workshop, you will:
- learn that judging entails professional writing and demands literary skills;
- learn to prepare a table of contents to structure your judgment;
- learn to minimize obiter dicta in your judgment;
- master the anatomy of a judgment- table of contents, issues for determination, the introduction, facts and procedural history, analysis and discussion, conclusion and disposition, and bibliography;
- understand why you need to reformulate the issues and answer them with reasons;
- learn how to reformulate an issue by finding governing law and isolating legally significant facts;
- learn the methods of drafting issues and unlearn the most of them;
- learn how to present issues; use deductive logic to render doctrinal holding; forget circumstances of this case; and prefer legal to procedural juxtapositions;
- learn how to start your judgment with an introduction by writing an executive summary;
- learn how to state the facts and procedural history of a case by telling a story with the pertinent facts without interpreting or interrupting;
- learn to shun the dating game and other data mess by avoiding excessive dates in the facts section;
- learn to call parties and witnesses their names and assign substantive description to data;
- learn to fit facts to law by aligning your facts with your analysis;
- learn to summarize the procedural background by recounting the filings and proceedings in story form.
- learn to write your analysis and discussion with effective organization, structure, and posture through outlines, point headings, roadmaps, topic sentences, transition, bridging, and paragraphing;
- learn to concur and dissent with style on a multi-judge bench;
- learn to minimize citations and quotations;
- learn to write easily comprehensible conclusions and dispositions;
- learn logic and clear thought for sound judicial reasoning and judicial writing;
- learn to write well; eschew legalese and verbosity; and proofread and edit your drafts.
Product Preview
File Name: Judicial-Writing.pdf
Chinua Asuzu is Africa's leading legal-writing scholar. He's the plain-language maven whose works include Brief-Writing Masterclass; Fair Hearing in Nigeria; Judicial Writing: A Benchmark for the Bench; and Learned Writing. Some of Chinua's works are available on amazon.com/author/chinuaasuzu.
Chinua is the dean of The Write House; the senior partner of Assizes Lawfirm; a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria; a Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies, University of London; and a member of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel. A jurisprudent, Chinua teaches legal writing at law firms and law schools, and at private and public forums. Chinua's expertise spans the gamut of legal writing: academic legal writing, brief-writing, business writing, contract drafting, judicial writing, legislative drafting, and litigation drafting. An upwrite and writeous autodidact, Chinua is all write.
Leave a Comment