Dan Krisch: When Judges Quote Jimi Hendrix

I am getting ex-cited. The heart of any well-crafted opinion is its citations—whether it’s Black’s or Blackstone, Corbin on Contracts or Hazard on Ethics, proper authority is the lifeblood of stare decisis. To resolve certain issues, however, a typical cite just won’t do, so judges put down the United States Reports in favor of other, less-august sources:

“Alice in Wonderland”: Rare is the judge with a literary bent (in this instance, former Chief Justice Warren Burger) who can resist citing Humpty Dumpty’s take on statutory construction: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’” Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 173 n. 18 (1978). Mind you, Lewis Carroll is no one-cite pony. See Parhat v. Gates, 532 F.3d 834, 848-49 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (“the fact that the government has ‘said it thrice’ does not make an allegation true. See Lewis Carroll, “The Hunting of the Snark 3″ (1876) (“I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”).