ARTICLE: Andenas and Fairgrieve on Comparing Judicial Decisions

Mads Andenas and Duncan Fairgrieve's 'Simply a Matter of Style? Comparing Judicial Decisions' is on SSRN. The abstract reads:


Traditionally overlooked in academic discourse, the style or form of judgments is nonetheless subject to worldwide development. Courts are responding to the increasingly important international and European courts, exchanges and cross-citation over national boundaries, and the further opening up of legal systems, traditionally perceived as closed with well-defined hierarchies. Within this process, it is important for judges, practitioners and scholars to understand the different formats of judgments from other jurisdictions. The advent of the new United Kingdom Supreme Court has prompted a development of the form of judgment with emphasis on clarity and accessibility. The paper argues that delivering a judgment of the court, instead of individual judgments, while not suppressing dissenting judgments, would take this development to the next stage.