What prose cannot force you to say#
Back of the Envelope · Week 11
“…a paramount duty…to assist the Court impartially…”
The Federal Court’s Expert Evidence Practice Note — the duty the panel borrows the shape of.
A panellist can only challenge an assumption they can see#
That is why the written disclosure was due before today, not produced on demand.
Disclosure and challenge are one mechanism — a report that hides its assumptions cannot be usefully cross-examined.
Accept · Reject · Widen#
Accept — new evidence, or a flaw in your own reasoning, materially changes the assumption.
Reject — the challenge supplies no evidence and no reasoning that changes anything.
Widen — more uncertainty than your number implied, without justifying a move either way.
The new question the vocabulary doesn’t capture#
Not whether you know accept, reject, and widen — whether the assumption survives being said aloud to someone allowed to keep pushing.
A clean concession is not a smaller achievement than holding your ground.