5.2.1 IGNOR EISSUES
Some issues are obviously not relevant to the analysis. Others are relevant to the analysis, but are so obviously not controversial that the reader does not need you to spend even one sentence discussing the issue.
These are Ignore issues; that is, they are issues that you can ignore in your written legal analysis.For example, suppose that the statute forbidding drunk driving in your state contains this language:
Any person who operates any vehicle, streetcar, or trackless trolley within this state, may not, while operating the vehicle, streetcar, or trackless trolley, be under the influence of alcohol, a drug of abuse, or a combination of them, as specified in section B of this statute.
Let us presume that you work for the state prosecutor, and you have brought charges against a defendant who was arrested while sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, a Chevy Impala, parked on the side of a highway. She admitted that she drank four beers earlier that evening, and sobriety tests showed an illegal level of alcohol in her blood. In order to establish that she violated the statute, you would have to prove the following elements (words signaling elements are underlined):
Defendant is a person who was operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.
In your written analysis, you would not spend any time explaining that the defendant, as a human being, is a “person” under the statute. You could ignore this issue. Likewise, in this case, you would not expend even a sentence to say “a Chevy Impala, an automobile, is a ‘vehicle’ under the statute.” In another case, however, whether the person was operating a “vehicle” might well be at issue. In 2009, an Ohio man was arrested for operating a motorized barstool while intoxicated. In that situation, the state should not treat the “vehicle” element as an Ignore issue.
Thus, if an element is so obviously met that there could be no doubt in your reader’s mind that it is satisfied in this case, you should ignore it. Do not, however, let yourself be lulled into a false belief that an issue is not controversial. For example, you might believe that “operating” a vehicle is the same as driving and presume that someone sitting in a parked car is not legally operating the car. Research, however, might well reveal that “operation” includes sitting behind the driver’s seat in a car whose gearshift is in park.8