Bryan Garner’s June ABA Journal column reminds lawyers to write with care. Two of his suggestions are to avoid long words like subsequently in favor of shorter ones like later and to conform punctuation to The Chicago Manual of Style.

Such careful writing, Garner says, can lead to a win in the courtroom. For a brush-up on style, he recommends reading Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer and articles in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. The same can be said for judges!!!

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal asking whether the Second Amendment guarantees a right to carry guns in public for self-defense.  As is their custom the justices gave no reasons for their decision and simply refused to hear the appeal.

The case would have required the court to address a question it left open in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep guns for self-defense in the home.  The new case, Drake v. Jerijian, No. 13-827, concerned whether and how governments may restrict Second Amendment rights outside the home.

The case involved a New Jersey law that requires people seeking licenses to carry guns in public to demonstrate a “justifiable need.” In practice, according to the law’s challengers, “few ordinary people can hope to obtain a New Jersey handgun carry permit.”