The Declaration of Independence begins with an explanation of why it explains itself: “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
What follows is a list of grievances against the King. The document does not only announce the separation. It gives the reasons for it.
On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court decided Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California by a vote of 5 to 4. The government had ended the DACA program for immigrants brought to the country as children. The Court did not rule on whether it could end the program. It ruled on how it had explained the decision.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “an agency must defend its actions based on the reasons it gave when it acted.” Under the Administrative Procedure Act an agency must “provide a reasoned explanation for its action.” The Court found that the rescission violated the Act and vacated it.
In 2015 the law professor William Baude wrote about the Supreme Court’s emergency orders: “This docket operates in such obscurity that I call it the ‘shadow docket.'”
In his book The Shadow Docket, the law professor Stephen Vladeck criticized “inconsistent, unsigned, and unexplained decisions that are affecting more and more Americans.”
The Marine Corps doctrine manual Warfighting states: “There are two parts to any mission: the task to be accomplished and the reason or intent behind it.” It continues: “The task denotes what is to be done, and sometimes when and where; the intent explains why.”
The Army’s doctrine publication ADP 6-0 defined commander’s intent as “a clear and concise expression of the purpose of the operation and the desired military end state.” Tasks “include all the standard elements (who, what, when, where, and why).”
During the Second World War the US Army commissioned seven films from the director Frank Capra under the title Why We Fight. The first, Prelude to War, was released on May 27, 1942.
General George Marshall explained their purpose in a letter to President Roosevelt. The films would “replace the series of lectures given newly inducted soldiers as to why we are in the war.”
In September 2009 Simon Sinek gave a talk at TEDxPuget Sound called “How great leaders inspire action.” Its central sentence: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” The talk has been played more than 71 million times on the TED website.
Because I said so. This is what a parent says when the reasons have run out. Every American child has heard it.
The phrase is an order without reasons. It ends the conversation without winning the argument.
The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics list practices that students should learn. The third reads: “Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.”
The standard explains: “Mathematically proficient students understand and use stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments.”
“Until early 1994, the Fed did not issue a statement after an FOMC meeting,” the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis writes. The first statement in 1994 was “just four sentences.”
The explanations grew. “In April 2011, then-Chairman Ben Bernanke began the practice of holding a post-meeting news conference four times a year.”
On March 12, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke on the radio about the banking crisis. He began: “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” He promised to explain “what has been done in the last few days, why it was done.”
Near the end he said: “It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.”