Controversy, Courts, and Community: The Rhetoric of Judge Miles Welton Lord

(Hardback)

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Explores how a famous trial court judge used rhetorical strategies to engage the public and the legal community in challenging the accepted views of the proper roles for the courts and the community in the pursuit of justice. Analyzes the role of Judge Lord in stimulating public debate about some well-known and controversial cases and in doing so helps enrich our understanding of how trial court judicial rhetoric and opinions can contribute to public understanding and a fruitful discussion of the law, the courts, and their relationship to the community. Judge Lord made his opinions accessible and potentially persuasive to a public auidence through his attention to judicial personal, argument structures that helped to maintain a sense of dramatic narrative, the use of plain language, and the use of substitution, metaphor, and comparison. In addition to offering practical insights into the operation of trial courts, judicial persuasion, and the settlement of some important cases, provides an overview of different judicial approaches to the use of rhetoric. This in-depth study of a noted judge and important trials can serve as a useful text for students in law, communications, public policy, and American studies and will be of interest to scholars and professionals alike.

Reviews

Judge Miles Welton Lord, who retired in 1985 from the Federal District for Minnesota, is one of the most interesting and controversial federal trial court judges of recent times. The premise of this work is to examine the rhetoric of his decisions to show the role of judicial speech in creating and maintaining community. ...For academic law libraries this study is a likely choice...-Law Books In Review
"Judge Miles Welton Lord, who retired in 1985 from the Federal District for Minnesota, is one of the most interesting and controversial federal trial court judges of recent times. The premise of this work is to examine the rhetoric of his decisions to show the role of judicial speech in creating and maintaining community. ...For academic law libraries this study is a likely choice..."-Law Books In Review

Author Bio

VERNA C. CORGAN, Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Communications Arts at Hamline University, has a PhD in speech communication from the University of Minnesota. She has been concentrating on studies of judicial rhetoric at the trial court level that apply current theories of law and rhetoric and how they have influenced the outcome and public reponse to controversial cases.