Dictum of the day, or on unearned hubris

There are good reasons not to call an opponent’s argument “ridiculous,” which is what State Farm calls Barbara Bennett’s principal argument here. The reasons include civility; the near-certainty that overstatement will only push the reader away (especially when, as here, the hyperbole begins on page one of the brief); and that, even where the record supports an extreme modifier, “the better practice is usually to lay out the facts and let the court reach its own conclusions” [...] . But here the biggest reason is more simple: the argument that State Farm derides as ridiculous is instead correct.

Bennett v. State Farm Mutual Insurance Co., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, No. 13-3047, 24 September 2013 

Dictum of the Day, or Woland in Peace Palace

It seems our response may have had some effect: suddenly and noiselessly, a bit like one of those houses that suddenly disappears in the extraordinarily wonderful novel that is The Master and Margarita, the arguments just magically “collapsed, [and] nothing was left”. The only thing that was missing yesterday, to paraphrase Mr. Bulgakov, was the trademark “cloud of black smoke” there was none. The magical consequence is that my speech this morning can be a great deal shorter than it was originally expected to be.

Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation), International Court of Justice, Phillipe Sands, Oral Argument for Georgia, 14 September 2010, para. 3.