Although some law professors make a living hiding the ball, I will repeat my thesis right up front: Good legal writers are simply good writers – strong English stylists. As my first example, I offered Chief Justice John Roberts, who showed in Learning Resources v. Trump how to choose the optimal subject for English-language storytelling: an actor who can do things (there, the president imposing tariffs unlawfully). To emulate Roberts, focus on the first seven or eight words of your sentences in search of a subject that is a character.
But why focus on those first seven or eight words? After all, subjects are moveable. As Master Yoda might say, “Near the end of a sentence, a subject you can find.” In United States v. Hemani, Justice Neil Gorsuch shows why we don’t write like Yoda speaks: English readers look for and prefer an early subject/verb transition, after which they will automatically emphasize new or important information at the end of a sentence.
Gorsuch leveraged this tactic right in the first paragraph of Hemani, where he signaled (without saying so) that the Supreme Court had reached a surprising result. Remember back to October 2025 when the court granted certiorari. The cognoscenti (including my favorite legal podcast) predicted that Hemani would lose. Hemani seemed like other cases where a “bad man” (who smokes weed and might be a terrorist) goes to jail – at least until Gorsuch wrote his story.
With sentence-level choices, Gorsuch immediately revealed that Hemani would prevail. We read that Hemani used marijuana “a few times a week.” But based on that fact alone, the government sought to “disarm him for life.” With this windup, Gorsuch asked whether this was “consistent with the Second Amendment.”
No, it was not. Nobody even dissented.
Gorsuch made the outcome seem inevitable by placing each of the phrases quoted above at the end of a sentence. Even more, he placed all the key, persuasive information in the same position.
Just like the chief in Learning Resources, Gorsuch is not engaged in legal writing so much as strong English style. From outside the legal academy, both George Gopen and Joseph Williams would tell you that English readers give the last few words of a sentence special emphasis. Gopen even calls them a “stress position.” And Gorsuch treats those stress positions as the most valuable real estate in an English sentence: Only key facts that drive the outcome are welcome to reside there.
Focus on the sentence endings and you’ll see the facts crucial to Mr. Hemani. You’ll learn that Hemani spent “most of his life [in Texas].” He held a “stable job.” But the government searched the “family home in 2022.” When interviewed, Hemani was “cooperative.” He admitted using marijuana “about every other day.”
Do the same thing, focus only on sentence endings, and you’ll see the factors that damage the government’s case. For example, the government did not prosecute Hemani for “terrorism—the reason for the search in the first place.” Nor did it prosecute him for “anything like [serious drug crimes].” Instead, he was charged merely as an “’unlawful user’ of a controlled substance.” Based on this alone, the government sought “disarmament for life” without contending Hemani was a “drug addict,” a “danger to himself or others,” or that he had done anything with his gun “other than possess it in his home.”
To engineer those stresses, Gorsuch again makes an architectural choice that your English teacher would applaud: early subject/verb location. In “Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace,” Williams notes, “If you have managed your subjects and topics well, you will by default put the words you want to emphasize toward the ends of your sentences.” He recommends curt beginnings: a short transition, a concrete subject, and a verb. And in “The Sense of Structure,” Gopen warns that your reader expects a subject to be followed “almost immediately” by the verb.
With very few exceptions, Gorsuch used this architecture, putting his subjects and verbs together, right at the start of his sentences in Hemani. Indeed, he gets so snappy that several sentences rely on implied subjects that readers must supply on their own. (“No matter that the government did not assert Mr. Hemani was a drug addict. No matter that it did not contend that his drug use had ever led him to pose a danger to himself or others.”)
In his factual narrative, Gorsuch made this choice in every sentence but four – and those were not an accident. Every time that Gorsuch significantly delayed subject and verb, he filled his initial, dependent clause with information that he thought should not change the outcome: gun ownership, uncharged crimes, and marijuana use.
“And because Mr. Hemani admits he owns a gun despite the ban, . . .”
“But, suspecting Mr. Hemani and his family members of terrorism-related activities, . . .”
“After the agents found cocaine in his parents’ closet, . . .”
“Instead, relying solely on his admitted use of marijuana about every other day, . . .”
With this choice, a Jedi-level writer is signaling, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”
Thus, by intentionally delaying subject and verb, Gorsuch decreased reader attention on information that had no place in his persuasive mission. But a writer changes that story – perhaps drastically so – if subject and verb are placed haphazardly.
Skeptical? Note how some versions of the same information undermine Gorsuch’s persuasive mission when Gorsuch’s own ideas are just moved around. In the first, Mr. Hemani’s work ethic is swallowed in a long, dependent clause, while the reader is invited to focus on the city where he lives.
In recent years, while working a stable job and residing with his parents, Hemani has lived in the Dallas area.
In the second, the work ethic becomes episodic and is swallowed between subject and verb, while the reader is invited to focus on a grown man living with his parents.
Hemani, while working a stable job in recent years, has lived in the Dallas area with his parents.
But Gorsuch puts the emphasis where it helps his persuasive mission: Mr. Hemani works a stable job.
In recent years, he has lived in the Dallas area with his parents and worked a stable job.
Which Hemani would you rather be? The one who worked a stable job? The Dallas resident? Or the one who failed to launch and probably lives in his parents’ basement?
So, to calibrate what your reader notices, write like Gorsuch. Prefer subjects and verbs together, near the beginning of a sentence. When you do, you help ensure that the most important information lands in the stress position where your reader will value it.
Write first drafts in any style, even intuitively or by ear. But when you line edit, make structural decisions like an architect:
- Underline subjects and circle verbs.
- Are they close to each other?
- Apart from short phrases (like this one), do they start off the sentences?
- If not, do you have “good reason” to make another choice – for example, de-emphasis?
- Looking to the sentence endings, does each contain a worthy tenant – something important, novel, complicated or persuasive?
- If not, has important information been swallowed elsewhere? In a dependent clause? Between subject and verb?
Hemingway was right, so right that he now seems cliché. “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.” But if he has become cliché, that’s only because he has been right for so long. Sure, some lawyers and professors still primp ornamented, filigreed sentences. But English readers prefer a different architectural style: subject/verb . . . stress position. In Hemani, Gorsuch followed the blueprint.