Biggles Wrote:I took a judicial writing course back in the '80s, and the first thing the faculty told us was "get rid of passive voice". Legal writing from the 20th Century back is just filled with passive voice (and yes, I know that was passive voice ). Chief Justice John Marshall (whom I despise for more important reasons) was one of the worst offenders. You should read some of his "great" opinions, such as Marbury v. Madison and Gibbons v. Ogden.
Passive voice is a good way to abdicate responsibility. Perhaps that is why it is so popular among the justices.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. ... The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
~ Howard Phillips Lovecraft