Hold the Latin

Attractive Nuisance associates Justice Souter with his rather dry prose, which, in his better opinions, is punctuated with a modicum of rather dry humor. Rothgery v. Gillespie County, No. 07-440, released today, is not such an opinion. Dryer than the most acidic of rieslings, the opinion reads like a treatise on the Sixth Amendment right of counsel, and note 14 is a behemoth of an unnecessary string cite enumerating precedent in forty-three states holding that a defendant's right of counsel attaches at the time of the defendant's first appearance in court. A-Nu feels slightly ill when she contemplates the talents of Supreme Court clerks being channelled into bluebooking each state's controlling case or statute, poring over these citations as though each one were a tiny impressionist poem.

But A-Nu wouldn't even feel compelled to blog about this case, except it contains a most offensive instance of gratuitous Latin: nolle prosequi, which, the interwebs tell A-Nu, means "do not pursue." This presumably refers to a decision the prosecutor might make about a charge against a particular defendant. But A-Nu thinks that, similar to most legal Latin, the interjection of a nolle prosequi actually signifies an author's intent to communicate the sentiment: "I am very smart; smart enough to use this Latin phrase in context."

A-Nu believes that Justice Souter's intelligence is widely acknowledged; she therefore considers it particularly unnecessary for him to employ phrases that the indigent defendant will have to spend hours trying to understand.