The following case touches on issues of PROMISES (unilateral contracts?) and ARGUMENT and offers a surprising amount of insight in a relatively few pages: 100205 USA v Reagan ARGUMENT
Category Archives: Argument
Investigating Argument
According to the A.D. 1992 edition of O’Connor’s Texas Rules Civil Trial, Texas courts recognized kinds of hearings: 1) evidentiary; and 2) argument. Neither kind of hearing was favored over the other. However, according to the A.D. 2005 edition of O’Connor’s same book, those two kinds of hearings are still recognized, but “evidentiary hearings are [now] disfavored”.
In other words, the modern court system prefers to reach decisions based on argument hearings wherein litigants advance premises (beliefs) rather than evidentiary hearings where litigants introduce facts (objective truths) into the record. As a result, someone skilled in the art of argument (like an attorney) could theoretically win in a hearing even when the facts (truth) were against him. More, it appears that the courts prefer that hearings be decided by argument rather than by factual evidence (truth).
Notice Pleading Notes
I’ve been trying to make sense of our legal system for 26 years. So, I was much surprised when I recently learned that “notice pleading” is America’s “dominant form of pleading”. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never even heard the term “notice pleading,” and now I find out that it’s the “dominant form” of pleading. As is often the case, I’m a little humiliated to learn that after a quarter century of studying this legal system, I had no clue to our “dominant form” of pleading.
However, I don’t feel too embarrassed because I’ll bet that you, too, haven’t previously heard of “notice pleading”. In fact, I’ll bet that 99.9% of Americans have not previously heard of “notice pleading”. If I won that bet, it would be evidence that something important might be concealed in the concept of “notice pleading”. After all, how can the “dominant form” of courtroom pleading be “accidentally” unknown to virtually all of the American people unless “the powers that be” were trying to hide something?
