One of the hardest things in writing an appellate brief is responding to the case law precedent used by the opposing party.  In the best of worlds you would be able to spend the entirety of your brief making your points, discussing the case law favorable to your argument, and not having to spend time and pages responding to your opponent’s discussion of case law. In this best of all worlds you could distinguish your opponent’s case law precedent to irrelevance in one fell swoop. Distinguishing case law precedent as a group with but a few words instead of doing so individually over many pages isn’t a technique that can be used often, but when appropriate it can be devastatingly effective. I’ve always thought…