The phrase is not a term of art in the law; it has no exact meaning, nor does it have a legal definition.
He said that people mistakenly criticize the technicalities, which are both "necessary and inevitable", when they should focus instead on preventing the original causes of litigation and crime.
[6] Brewton wrote that the rules of procedure are complex because there is no simplified approach that would be sufficient.
We are to admit, then, that courts are not the victims either of a lack of common sense or of a smug judicial temperament when, to preserve order and permanent arrangement in the law, they hand down decisions which appear absurd upon their face.
For if one will take the trouble to uncover everything entering into such decisions, usually it will be found that good and important reasons underlie them...It is not the reasonable province of courts to overturn the science of jurisprudence in order that the reasons for their operations may appear as self-evident as those of an ordinary sum in arithmetic, and in order that the reports of their decisions may read like a newspaper story.