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Showing posts from February, 2018

On 4202: Legal Briefs, Boxer Briefs, and Boxer Dogs

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Back when I was a young law clerk at the U.S. Court of International Trade, I was occasionally inspired to lobby my judge to insert a clever phrase or literary allusion into an otherwise dry opinion. I specifically recall trying to insert the phrase " second thwack at the piƱata " where "second bite at the apple" would have been the more common usage. In a case involving the tariff classification of fruit preserves, I tried to convince the judge to use phrases like "the defendant is in a jam," "Customs squeezed the importer," "the fruits of this effort," etc. None of that made it into the published opinion. It appears that Judge Katzmann of the U.S. Court of International Trade has a much more liberal view of drafting, or possibly a much more persuasive law clerk. I gather that from reading Quaker Pet Group, LLC v. United States . The decision opens with this scene: Catching sight of three tiny orphaned kittens wandering in a battl