Sounds of Silence

• Author: Philip N. Meyer
• Pages: 22-23

Sounds of Silence

From a 1960s federal prosecutor to a former president, what lawyers

can learn about the power of the pause By Philip N. Meyer

In his book Cruel an d Unusual: The Supreme Court

and Capital Punishm ent, Michael Meltsner writes about

a young Anthony Amsterd am. A federal prosecutor in the

District of Columbia i n the early 1960s, Amsterda m was

arguing a Fourt h Amendment case before the U.S. Court

of Appeals for the Distr ict of Columbia Circuit.

The legal issue was whet her the police had waited long

enough after knock ing before entering an apartment to

execute a search—spec ifi cally whe ther a delay of about

25 seconds was su cient time to allow for the occ upants

to answer the door before brea king it down.

Amsterda m began his argument with t he formulaic:

“May it please the court ... .” Then he stopped. He rema ined

respectf ully silent. According to Meltsner, during the silence ,

“the few seconds seemed a n eternity.” The judges became

uncomfortable and were ab out to break in themselves when

Amsterda m fi nally commenc ed his argument: “That was

the length of time that t he police waited before they broke

into the defendant’s apart ment.” The silence worked, and

Amsterda m won the appeal.

More recently, in 2015 President Barack Obama eu logized

the Rev. Clementa Pinckney and eight par ishioners who

were assassinat ed by Dylann Roof at the Emanuel Af rican

Methodist Episcopal C hurch in Charleston, South Caroli na.

Roof later told police he was at tempting to foment racial

hatred and star t a race war.

Obama delivered his spe ech to a church audience of

grieving pa rishioners and to a vast, live nat ional media

audience. The stakes cou ldn’t have been higher; it was a

historic speech a t a dangerous cultural moment and

attempted to mark t he occasion as an infl ection point

of cultural tra nsformation.

Obama’s speech was a church eulog y ennobling the lives

of the fallen. But it was equa lly a political argument ack nowl-

edging our dark lega cy of slavery as our country’s orig inal

sin, identifyi ng slavery as the reason for the Civi l War and

recognizi ng the legacies of slavery and racism that r emain

in our society to t his day. This included the pain infl icted

by the continuing celebration of the Confe derate fl ag.

He also addressed s ociety’s need for gun control and the

need to address s ystemic injustice within the cr iminal jus-

tice system bas ed on racial and economic bias.

How did Obama connect al l these remarkably diverse sub-

jects? He employed a poetic lyrici sm that built purposefully

toward a crucia l, eloquent and refl ect ive silence. For models,

Obama drew on the church ser mons of Martin Luther

King Jr. and the battlefi eld Civil War speeches of Abra ham

Lincoln. Like K ing, Obama broke his speech into sta nzalike

sections and ca ll-and-response musicality. Like K ing and

Lincoln, Obama use d strategic pauses and silence to ma rk

crucial tra nsition points in his performance.

The core theme of Obama’s eulogy was g race—our need to

receive grace a nd honor it in our lives and our actions, as it

was received and honored t hrough the lives and the deaths

of Pinckney and the par ishioners. Obama put it this way:

“We don’t earn grace. We’re all sinners. We don’t deserve it.

But God gives it to us a nyway.” He personally reworked h is

speechwriter s’ initial drafts on hi s long, yellow legal pads,

drawing a recur ring inspirational refra in from the lyrics of

his favorite hymn, “Ama zing Grace.”

Obama’s speech concluded with a dra matic and refl ec tive

13-second silence, tr ansitioning into his heartfelt ye t slightly

o -ke y singing of the fi rst s tanza of “Amazing Grace.” He

then delivered a powerfu l crescendo—calling out the names

of the dead, accompan ied by PowerPoint images of the

departed.

SILENT IMPACT

The precise timing and u se of prolonged “live” silences

were crucial to t he successes of Amsterdam’s and Obama’s

presentations and cruc ial to the impact of the argument s

they were making.

For Amsterdam, t he silence enabled the judges to grasp

viscerall y the length of time the police waited uncom fortably

on one side of the apartment door while not know ing what

might be waiting for them on the other, in a way his w ords

alone could not.

For Obama, the use of pauses a nd silence was more com-

plex. The pauses provided musica l beats in stanzali ke sec-

tions. In the vocabula ry of narrative theory, the shorter

silences were like ellipse s (spaces in time) building to the

fi nal silence that allowed the audience to re fl ect on his words

and sink into share d emotion.

The fi nal silence provided a hando , or transition forward,

to Obama’s rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and then quic kly

sequenced to call ing out the names of the dead, providing

an emotional ending on a Ki ng-like evocation of religious

community and redemption.

22 || ABA JOURNAL JULY 2018

Storytelling

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS,

LIANE JACKSON

Practice