Volokh quotes how Professor Friedman burned some of his valuable Supreme Court argument time:
From the oral argument transcript today in Briscoe v. Virginia, a funny moment in the argument of University of Michigan law professor Richard Friedman:
MR. FRIEDMAN: I think that issue is entirely orthogonal to the issue here because the Commonwealth is acknowledging -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I’m sorry. Entirely what?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Orthogonal. Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Oh.
JUSTICE SCALIA: What was that adjective? I liked that.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Orthogonal.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Orthogonal.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Right, right.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Orthogonal, ooh.
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE KENNEDY: I knew this case presented us a problem.
(Laughter.)
MR. FRIEDMAN: I should have — I probably should have said -
JUSTICE SCALIA: I think we should use that in the opinion.
(Laughter.)
MR. FRIEDMAN: I thought — I thought I had seen it before.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Or the dissent.
(Laughter.)
MR. FRIEDMAN: That is a bit of professorship creeping in, I suppose.
“Orthogonal.” I gotta slip that one into my response next time I’m asked what I think about S. Palin’s shilling for Fox. And I may whack my students with it too: “Does the interpleading of funds put the primary parties in an orthogonal, rectilinear, or hyperbaric relationship? Why do you conclude that? Expound and explain.”
Here’s how my dictionary defines it
orthogonal, rectangular
having a set of mutually perpendicular axes; meeting at right angles; “wind and sea may displace the ship’s center of gravity along three orthogonal axes”; “a rectangular Cartesian coordinate system”
Similar to:
- perpendicular
The buzzword when I was in grad school was “imbricated,” which I had to look up. Appears in one 20th-century SCOTUS op, by Justice Marshall.
Just as many lawyers that I have had contact with; “we might be a little to educated above our intelligentsia“!
Prof. Friedman would have done well to have read Justice Scalia’s book, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. Had he done so he might have understood the nexus between using words like orthogonal and failing to make one’s case to the Court.
Oops. Did I say nexus?
Eschew obfuscation . . .
Safire would be proud.