Legal Commentary

Write to Explain, Not to Impress

By David Bernstein

Yesterday, I was editing the Introduction to my ?Rehabilitating Lochner? book, and I needed a word to fill in the following sentence: ?Lochner itself is now considered the ___ of the liberty of contract cases, though the opinion has not always attracted such disproportionate attention.? After some thought, I came up with the word ?apotheosis.? I thought it looked good, and, given that this was an early sentence in the book, made me sound erudite.

But then I remembered that I?m trying to write for the readers? benefit, not to sound smart or well-educated. (William F. Buckley, who was an excellent writer but often used obscure words, was trying to sound smart, in part to counter the image that conservatives are ignorant.) And I noted that even though I have a pretty good vocabulary, I had to look up apotheosis to make sure I was using it correctly, which likely meant that many of my readers would be unsure of the word?s meaning. So I deleted apotheosis, and replaced it with ?epitome,? a much more common word. The sentence may sound less erudite, but it?s much more comprehensible.

UPDATE: On further reflection, I changed the sentence to ?Lochner has come to exemplify of the liberty of contract cases, though the opinion has not always attracted such disproportionate attention.?

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 16, 2010 (boomark / email).