An appeal, you might think, is an argument that a lower court has got it wrong. Whether you would consider it to be 'a piece of linguistic shorthand which accepts the existence of a penumbra of uncertainty in order to achieve universal comprehensibility at a very low level of exactitude' is more doubtful; but what these authors seem to have in mind is that even a right of appeal doesn't necessarily allow you to challenge everything that has happened so far. This is particularly the case with findings of fact by civil judges. It is also the case, unless there has been a judicial misdirection, with the verdicts of juries, the vast majority of which are delivered in criminal and not civil cases.

LRB 6 September 2007 | PDF Download