The Status Quote

Attractive Nuisance owes her readers an apology for her long absence from the interwebs. Alas, sometimes even the most adroit dodger of the proverbial workplace bullet ends up having to do some work. But A-Nu is pleased to report that this brief interruption in her schedule has drawn to a close, and she is therefore free to resume the lifestyle of feckless and joyful parasitism to which she is all too well suited.

Said lifestyle, of course, involves pointing out the linguistic fallacies of federal judges, and A-Nu has a bone to pick with Judge McKee regarding Miller v. Clinton County, 4415102 (3d Cir. Oct. 1, 2008), available here .

By and large A-Nu is a fan of Judge McKee's writing, which not infrequently transcends the "clear and readable" category (A-Nu's equivalent of a middle-of-the-bell-curve, on-mean grade) to earn the "nicely phrased" badge of honor (a solid A-minus from A-Nu). In Clinton, for example, McKee rejects a document proffered by a government employee as insufficiently related to a matter of public concern to warrant First Amendment protection. He writes: "Miller's letter did manage to brush ever so gently against a matter of public concern . . . . However, that seemingly serendipitous encounter does not convert her personal grievance into protected speech." A-Nu just adores this lovely and alliterative description.

Judge McKee has an unfortunate habit, though, of putting words that are arguably a bit slangy or idiomatic in quotation marks, as though asking the reader to forgive his use of a slightly obscure term. In Clinton, the "obscure" words and phrases thus quotationally segregated include "gripe," "axe to grind," and "cherry pick." A-Nu finds this (a) unnecessary; (b) pretentious; and (c) contributing to the unfortunate perception of the judiciary as so out of touch with reality that it can't use words like "gripe" without offering a punctuational apology for such brazen informality. She especially takes Judge McKee for task for this sort of nonsense, given that he's barely in his sixties , a mere youth as far as the federal judiciary is concerned.

A-Nu notes that ample persuasive authority establishes the propriety of using the noted phrases sans quotatation marks. Judge Posner has referred to an unpunctuated gripe in at least ten opinions, beginning more than twenty-five years ago in Maxey v. Thompson, 680 F.2d 924 (7th Cir. 1982) ("Johnson would have a legitimate gripe . . . ."). If Posner, who turns seventy in January , has been griping, unpunctuated, for a quarter century, A-Nu thinks Judge McKee should feel free to do likewise.

The same goes for McKee's axe to grind (see, e.g., Tucker v. Palmer, 2008 WL 4067541 (6th Cir. Sept. 4, 2008); Higgenbotham v. Baxter Internat'l, Inc., 495 F.3d 753 (7th Cir. 2007)), as well as his picked cherries (see, e.g., Wood v. Allen, 2008 WL 4215078 (11th Cir. Sept. 16, 2008); Trenkler v. United States, 536 F.3d 85 (1st Cir. 2008)).

So here's a "shout out" to the federal judiciary: "ditch" those "wack" quotation marks. Your opinions will be the better for it.