The more things stay the same . . .
A frequent piece of advice that you will find in a lot of the literature on closing arguments is to “empower the jury”. The concept is to give the jurors the sense that they are making the decisions not the lawyers. You do not want the jurors to feel as if the lawyers are leading them by the nose. You want them to feel like they are in charge.
The word “empower” seems to me to be a word that has made its’ way into usage over the last 10 years or so. Being a somewhat new word it has the connotation that the concept behind it is something recently discovered. But is it?
I recently ran across the paragraph set forth below in Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” He was talking about the persuasiveness of the famed lawyer Daniel Webster who practiced law during the first half of the 19th Century. This is what he said:
Daniel Webster, who looked like a god and talked like Jehovah, was one of the most successful advocates who ever pleaded a case; yet he ushered in his most powerful arguments with such friendly remarks as: “It will be for the jury to consider,” “This may, perhaps, be worth thinking of,” “Here are some facts that I trust you will not lose sight of,” or “You, with your knowledge of human nature, will easily see the significance of these facts.” No bulldozing. No high-pressure methods. No attempt to force his opinions on others. Webster used the soft-spoken, quiet, friendly approach, and it helped to make him famous.
Human kind has made great leaps and bounds in the area of invention and technology, yet over thousands of years human nature has remained the same. It is worth taking a look at the lawyers and orators of old.
