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Monday, June 04, 2018

SCOTUS Term: Masterpiece Cakeshop, The Dictapedia Edition

Thanks so much to Howard and the Prawfs crew for inviting me back this month!

As Howard points out, the logic of Masterpiece Cakeshop does not hang together particularly well, probably as a result of trying to make the holding as narrow as possible. But many of the statements in the case (especially those Leah quotes, which may have relevance to the travel ban case) seem to be written specifically with an eye toward getting quoted in future cases. Over on Twitter, Professor David Noll asks: "What's a good name for a court opinion whose primary purpose is to generate quotations for future briefs?" My favorite suggestion so far is "Dictapedia," though I also like "bench bite" as a close second. I might also add "brief bait." Other suggestions?

Posted by Cassandra Burke Robertson on June 4, 2018 at 02:38 PM in 2018 End of Term | Permalink

Comments

Here are some various suggestions.

In ordinary usage we would say that such words are "quotable" so something along the lines of "quotatious" as in "Masterpiece was a quotatious decision". Another option might be to combine quotation and dicta and get "quodictatious" (I like this one because it is a mouthful-"quo-dic-tatious".) Another direction to go would be to combine prestige and litigious and get "prestigalitigious" (pres-tig-a-lit-igious.

Bench bite sounds too violent.

Posted by: James | Jun 4, 2018 4:59:20 PM

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