One of our favorite scenes in A Few Good Men is the one where Jack Nicholson (a.k.a. Colonel Jessup) gives that speech in the courtroom where he's all, "You want me on that wall; you need me on that wall!"

Why do we love it? First of all, it's just a great speech. (And Jack and Tom Cruise look so young.)

And second, it employs one of our favorite rhetorical devices: symploce.

Symploce happens when the first and last words of a phrase, sentence, paragraph, etc. are repeated in other phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. In the example above, "you" and "me on that wall" are the symploce we're looking for.

And in the Louisiana Purchase documents, we see the same rhetorical device, but on a much grander scale.

Each of the three documents begins with a super similar phrase that says, basically, that the POTUS and First Consul have authorized Livingston, Monroe, and Barbé-Marbois to do X, Y, and Z.

And similarly, each document ends with the same words, essentially saying that these documents were originally in French and are now in French and English, and that Livingston, Monroe, and Barbé-Marbois approve of them and are indicating their approval with signatures and seals.

These documents may not be as star-studded and Oscar-worthy as A Few Good Men, but their use of symploce? Definitely award-winning.