Can You Recognize When A Court Opines, Asserts or Declares?
This article, Curb Your Editorial Urges When Describing a Court's Actions, Kenneth Oettle (NJLJ) (10/5/050) finally clarified for me the subtle differences in verbs like recognized, observed, ruled, held and others that describe how a court acted. As a general rule of thumb, here's how the author feels about some of these verbs:
Affirmed -- double meaning
* Asserted -- too forceful; Court has no need to assert
* Averred -- word is rarely used
* Declared -- grandiose
* Explained -- didn't, really
* Opined -- true, but probably too formal
* Remarked -- too casual
So, just another thing to obsess over in writing a brief.
