TerraBites

A short newsletter of bite-size ideas to chew on for Terrafirma owner-member land trusts, released January, February, May, June, September, October and November.

 

Posts from September 2019

Clear Thinking Replaces Confusion

You may be under the impression that you have to “think like a lawyer” when confronting legal challenges. But according to Michael Dorf, Professor of Law at Cornell University, there is no such thing – only “clear thinking and confusion.” That said, lawyers do have training to recognize three general types of legal questions:
 
Easy questions: These have straightforward, simple answers that you can look up in a book or on a website.
Complicated questions: These may have determinate answers, but to arrive at them one must first navigate considerable complexity, possibly from various sources of law.
Indeterminate questions: These questions – whether abstract or applied to a specific situation – have no one right answer, but a range of possibilities.
 
There is overlap between the categories, with some issues being partially indeterminate, and your question may not have a right answer. That does not mean, however, that there are no clearly wrong answers – because there are some very wrong answers. You can find a range of possibilities within legal materials, but correct answers must be within that range.
 
Adapted from Michael Dorf’s article, “Distinguishing Among Easy, Complicated, and Indeterminate Legal Questions”
 
 
September 23, 2019 | Tags:

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