Gored

Attractive Nuisance hopes that her readers will forgive her if her post is less elegant than usual: she is too enraptured by the election coverage to post in her typical erudite fashion. She wanted, however, to commemorate the eight-year anniversary of Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), by examining the wealth of unflattering descriptive verbiage that opinion has generated in subsequent opinions. Indeed, A-Nu would wager that no other opinion has generated the same level of semi-covert scorn.

In Stewart v. Blackwell, 444 F.3d 843, 880 (6th Cir. 2006), Judge Gilman's dissent baldly characterizes Bush v. Gore as "murky." Judge Martin's majority opinion loftily responds: "Murky, transparent, illegitimate, right, wrong, big, tall, short or small; regardless of the adjective one might use to describe the decision, the proper noun that precedes it-- 'Supreme Court'--carries more weight with us. Whatever else Bush v. Gore may be, it is first and foremost a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States and we are bound to adhere to it." Id. at 859 n.8. Although Judges Gilman and Martin clearly have their differences here, A-Nu is please to see that they managed to find a point of agreement in their poorly-disguised disdain for the logic of Bush v. Gore.

A popular adjective to describe Bush v. Gore is "unique." E.g. People v. Warren, 2002 WL 307579 (Cal.App. 3 Dist. Feb 27, 2002). Judge Lynch wrote in Green Party of State of New York v. Weiner, 216 F. Supp. 2d 176, 192 (S.D.N.Y. 2002), that Bush v. Gore, "if not entirely a one-day ticket, was decided on extraordinary facts."

A-Nu sincerely hopes that Bush v. Gore will, in fact, live up to the descriptor applied to it by so many courts and remain -- not "so unique," not "very unique" -- but simply, unequivocally, unique.

Wicked-pedia

A new paper abstract up on the Social Science Research Network brought to A-Nu's attention the fact that Wikipedia has now been cited in American judicial opinions over 300 times and counting. A-Nu is appalled by this trend.

Her primary gripe is not with the factual accuracy of Wikipedia. There are plenty of people griping about that already. Besides, A-Nu confesses to consulting Wikipedia (as an adjunct to Google) as a shortcut for all sorts of small intellectual annoyances that threaten to disturb the flow of day-to-day life, such as when she can't remember the name of Bolivia's president, or when she suddenly needs to know the exact rhyme scheme of a Villanelle. (Evo Morales and five triplets with a closing quatrain, for those playing along at home.)

Rather, A-Nu objects to the literary implications of the Wikipedization of American jurisprudence. She views a judge's choice of source documents to cite to as a component of the overall literary merit of the opinion. Citing Wikipedia for a proposition is tantamount to selecting USA Today over the Wall Street Journal for current events coverage, or School House Rock over the Chicago Manual of Style on a grammatical matter. As to the inelegant, fragmented, misspelled, passive-voice-using, comma-splice-ignoring, convention-of-having-both-a-noun-and-a-verb-in-every-sentence-flouting verbiage of Wikipedia, A-Nu feels strongly that Wikipedia's hideously crafted prose does not belong one step away from the sacred pages of judicial opinion.

She remains unpersuaded by the whole "Wikipedia is a unique insight into opinion of the general public" argument for incorporating Wikipedia cites. Wikipedia isn't an insight into public opinion; it's an insight into the opinions (and research skills) of a select posse who -- for whatever reason -- have so few obligations relating to employment, family, friends, hobbies, pets, and personal upkeep that they actually have the time to draft Wikipedia entries. And A-Nu isn't quite sure what public opinion is doing in a judicial decision anyway. There's a reason we entrust the fates of parties to litigation to tenured judges instead of an incensed shouting mob, and it has everything to do with not trusting public opinion.

Take note, judges. Wikipedia doesn't even get your bios right. Do you trust it to write your opinions for you?

Pugnacious

A few nights ago, A-Nu was walking down the street, minding her own business. It was dark but not late, and there were assorted other people around as well as a good bit of traffic. She approached a corner, where an overgrown hedge blocked her view of the foot traffic proceeding down the street perpendicular to the one A-Nu was walking on.

Just as A-Nu got to the end of the hedge, a pug came rocketing around the corner, a manic gleam in its bulging eyes, copious amounts of drool issuing from its hideously squashed mouth. "OH SHIT!!!" A-Nu exclaimed involuntarily upon confronting, and nearly stepping upon, this foul apparition. The foul apparition's owner, who turned out to be attached to the foul apparition via leash, rounded the corner an instant later and trained a self-righteous glare on A-Nu. A-Nu ducked and ran. She knows better than to mess around with inherently delusional people, a class to which pug owners belongs by definition.

Anyway, A-Nu's faithful readers will be pleased to know that she has almost fully recovered from this traumatic experience. Oddly, however, the encounter turned out to be somewhat prophetic. That very night A-Nu went home and learned, via the interwebs, that Chief Judge Herndon of the Southern District of Illinois had issued an opinion denying the government's motion to quash a subpoena "requesting records of the training of . . . canine Paco." United States v. Thomas, 2008 WL 4671501 (Oct. 22, 2008).

While not particularly literary in nature, this opinion delights A-Nu because of its repeated references to the drug-sniffing dog as "canine Paco." Given that many judges intentionally don't use names (preferring terms like "plaintiff," "defendant," "officer," "witness," etc.), A-Nu finds it endearing that Judge Herndon not only refers to Paco by name, but also anoints him with the title of "canine."

Moreover, the opinion holds that the records are necessary to determine whether canine Paco is a "well-trained narcotics-detection dog," evoking images of evidence being introduced as to canine Paco's grades during narcotic-detection school; disputes as to whether canine Paco's skill level rose to the level of WELL-trained, as opposed to merely adequately-trained; and even -- perhaps -- evidence of canine Paco's unsavory off-the-record personal life the that judge might or might not deem unfairly prejudicial under Federal Rule of Evidence 403.