It Only Matters What I Can Prove

After the SPL exam, I overheard two other students discussing their answers to the corpus delicti question about illegal sale of drugs. Naturally, I volunteered mine—the prohibited substance and the consideration or money found with the accused or his person.

Then, one of the students said that he read a case where it was ruled that it was not necessary for the buy-bust money to be present. Well, after that exchange, I kept on thinking and then I realized that by the way that student argued it seemed that he just answered prohibited drugs and stopped there. It was apparent that he didn't actually write what he was saying to me. It seemed he left details from his answer and assumed the reader or professor should know about it like it was common knowledge.

Tom Cruise, in the movie A Few Good Men, says it best:

It does not matter what I believe. It matters only what I can prove.

Although I haven't disciplined myself entirely, all throughout the exam, I was consciously asking myself: What is the legal argument? It takes effort to suppress the urge to venture my opinions, or as Tom Cruise would say it, "what I believe." But I suppose, the consequence of not getting the whole point of argumentation is to fall short or fail to prove my case.

It is rather obvious now that an incomplete legal argument is simply a what-I-believe statement. Only a complete legal argument has the power to prove.