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15 Legal Comm. & Rhetoric: JAWLD 247 (2018)
The Rule of Three

handle is hein.journals/jalwd15 and id is 250 raw text is: ESSAY The Rule of Three Patrick Barry* I am simmering simmering simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.' -Walt Whitman Our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education.2 -British Prime Minister Tony Blair You do affirm that all the testimony you are about to give in the case now before the court will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.3 - Oath administered in U.S. District Court Judges use the Rule of Three. Practitioners use the Rule of Three. And so do all manner of legal academics. Yet although many people seem to have an intuitive feel for how useful this rhetorical move is, no extended explanation of its mechanics and variety of forms exists. This essay offers that explanation. It begins with an introduction to the more straight- forward form of the rule of three, which simply involves arranging information not in twos or fours or any other set of numbers-but rather in the trusty, melodic structure of threes. It then moves on to a closer look at some of the Rule of Three's more-subtle forms. And finally, it concludes * Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Michigan Law School. I would like to thank Ramzi Abboud, Dave Babbe, Dan Dalton, Shai Dothan, Samir Hanna, Eva Fot Pagan, Tim Pinto, Ben Preyss, Helen Ryan, and Vivek Sankaran for helpful comments. I would also like to thank a wonderful set of research assistants for their editorial support: Julie Aust, James Coatsworth, Hannah Hoffman, and Joel Richert. 1 In conversation with fellow writer John Townshend Trowbridge; see John Townsend Trowbridge, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY (Feb. 1902), available at https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/ poetry/whitman/walt.htm. 2 Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, The Prime Minister Launching Labour's Education Manifesto, Address Delivered at The University of Southampton (May 23, 2001), in THE GUARDIAN, May 23, 2001 at 11:45 AM, available at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/may/23/labour.tonyblair. 3 Brendan Koerner, Where Did We Get Our Oath?, SLATE (Apr. 30, 2004, 5:52 PM), available at http://www.slate.com/ articles/news and politics/explainer/2004/04/where did we get our oath.htm; see also United States v. Ward, 989 E2d 1015, 1019 (9th Cir .1992).

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