In a sly reference to Nancy Pelosi's "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," Chief Justice Roberts quotes an old Felix Frankfurter article — "Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, "47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 545 (1947) — that described a cartoon "in which a senator tells his colleagues 'I admit this new bill is too complicated to understand. We’ll just have to pass it to find out what it means.'").But Language Log has the original Frankfurter passage...
Loose judicial reading makes for loose legislative writing. It encourages the practice illustrated in a recent cartoon in which a senator tells his colleagues "I admit this new bill is too complicated to understand. We'll just have to pass it to find out what it means." —Felix Frankfurter, "Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes," 47 Columbia Law Review 527, 545 (1947)... and the original 1947 cartoon (showing the misquoted "what it means" for "how it works"):
ADDED: When I was a kid I liked to read the funny pages and "Grin and Bear It" was the one cartoon that was not accessible to me. I read all the cartoons and I read that, but I had to just trust that whatever the humor was, some day I would get it. Today is that day.
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We will find out eventually how it works. Just as we found how how Roberts works.
Dear Professor Althouse: why the continuing scrupulous attention to the original text? The Supreme Court no longer cares, why should we?
Full Lawlessness is manifested now. It came from the top down until it now reigns in the Court that used to stop it after a few years of delays.
We now have a Honey Badger Court. It just don't care.
That John Roberts is one sly MF'er!
Originally, the cartoon featured two guys, one named Grimm and the other one Barrett.
Okay, I just made that up.
Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that watching Wallace and Gromit holds my attention for about 10 minutes, at the most, and I feel kind of guilty about that.
That said, it's a hell of a lot of fun to put your hands up, wiggle your fingers and go, "CHEEEESE, Gromit! CHEEEESE!
Go ahead. Try it.
See what I mean?
Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field has expanded to encompass the entire country.
showing the misquoted "what it means" for "how it works"
"How it works" (or "what it does") is correct; funny that a cartoonist understood that but the gov't lawyers didn't. Ha ha.
Time to buy stock in Banana Republic.
It is correct to substitute "what it means" for "how it works" because words mean whatever we want them to mean. And because I said so.
Grin and Bear It! I had completely forgotten about that strip, have vague memories of enjoying it when I was much younger.
Geez, just looked it up in Wikipedia, and Grin and Bear It ran until this year?!? I don't think it's been in a newspaper I read for decades.
"Humpty-Dumpty" John Roberts.
yup, figures that ran the year that The Taft-Hartley Act happened. I wonder if that provoked the cartoon or just all the crap that came down through the FDR administration that could not then be undone. Just for fun do a search for federal laws passed in 1947. Interesting reading.
noun
Britishinformal
noun: jiggery-pokery
Jiggery pokery!
Scalia: "The Court's next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery involves other parts of the Act that purportedly presuppose the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges."
jiggery pokery: noun; deceitful or dishonest behavior.
Origin; (British informal) late 19th century: probably a variant of Scots joukery-pawkery, from jouk ‘dodge, skulk,’ of unknown origin.
I also remember another single panel cartoon that ran alongside "Grin and Bear It": "Mott the Hoople." Now, I have trouble finding anything about "Mott the Hoople," the cartoon. I see people referring to "Mott the Hoople," the novel, and the only thing anyone remembers about it is that Mott the Hoople, the rock band, got its name from the novel. And now I wonder whether anyone remembers even the rock band, in which case, the novel is almost fully erased from existence, and the cartoon seems ever more like a figment of my imagination.
I recognize the name Mott the Hoople, but thought it was a David Bowie song. The song was actually All the Young Dudes, written by David Bowie and performed by Mott the Hoople.
They were referenced in the movie Juno.
@Ann, it's actually funny you mention the novel - I remember reading it as a lad, back in my "Still Life With Woodpecker," "Zarathustra," and "Siddhartha" phase. I did a 'look inside' on Amazon and had to wince at the writing. No idea how I read all that crap.
Perhaps better forgotten.
OTOH, I'd totally forgotten about the original "All the young dudes" and have kicked off a great Pandora stream. Thanks!
Cheers,
-XC
There was a time I would have found that cartoon funny. Not anymore.
The misquote where "what it means" is substituted for "how it works"
I think that is a revealing misquote. The SCOTUS is supposed to read the laws and tell us “what it means”, to give us the interpretation based on the actual words in the actual law. What it (the law) means.
Congress and the Executive should be concerned with "How it works".
...or anyway it used to be that way, back in the old republic days.
Frankfurter is also of the sausage genus.
My favorite Grin and Bear It: "Your honor, my client is entitled to a trial in front of a jury of his peers and there isn't a single pick-pocket on this jury!
Now, I have trouble finding anything about "Mott the Hoople," the cartoon
Are you perhaps thinking of "Our Boarding House with Major Hoople"?
http://www.bullworks.net/daily/board1944a.jpg
My personal favorite peeve! Try getting a definition for any unusual word on google and it will be a band name, or an album, and that will be included in the "definitions."
A couple of recent ones: arsis, eftsoons.
I had no idea there was a novel called "Mott the Hoople" but now I want to read it just on general principles.
I used to love Major Hoople.
Egad Martha!
When I was a kid I liked to read the funny pages and "Grin and Bear It" was the one cartoon that was not accessible to me.
There's an implied claim here that you were able to see some kind of point to Gasoline Alley. Color me skeptical.
Oh! I see now. It was "Our Boarding House," with Major Hoople. I'm confusing my Hooples!
@madisonfella
Thanks. I'd already figured it out by the time I read that.
"Definition of HOOPLE
dialectal
: hoop; especially : a child's hoop for play"
@Paul
There were kids in "Gasoline Alley."
And speaking of rock music, "Gasoline Alley" is a great album!
Which one was it that the catch line was "There oughta be a law"?
"All the Young Dudes" - I smile now remembering telling my college friend what the song was about and his astonished, if not horrified, reaction.
Our small-town daily newspaper ran one-panel comics that looked like they were from the turn of the century. "Out Our Way" and "Our Boarding House - featuring Major Hoople". I tried to understand them but even a precocious 10-year-old has his limits. Suffice it to say, my grandfather (born in 1878) like them.
Wow, the comments exploded with Major Hooples before I could publish. Glad I'm not the only one to remember it.
My favorite was The Katzenjammer Kids.
Language police log --
All old books and movies that use the word "gay", which doesn't mean homo people will be banned.
tits.
Oral arguments are wondrous! No room for bullshit or Ritmos!
If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the Moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool
Appropriate for today's SCOTUS ruling, Mott the Hoople and all?
Man on the Moon
Mott the Hoople and the game of Life yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Monopoly, Twenty one, checkers, and chess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Let's play Twister, let's play Risk yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'll see you heaven if you make the list yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Now, Andy did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby
Are we losing touch?
If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool
Moses went walking with the staff of wood yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Newton got beaned by the apple good yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Now, Andy did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby
Are you having fun?
Here's a little agit for the never-believer yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a little ghost for the offering yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a truck stop instead of Saint Peter's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mott the Hoople eventually supplied members of superband, Bad Company - which is what this ruling is.
Is it possible Roberts saved us from an even worse ruling by writing the opinion? I can't imagine how that's possible but I suppose it is.
From Ann Coulter in 2005:
". . . we don't know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever."
Tim, there was a comic called "There Oughta Be a Law". I loved it when I was a kid, and I loved (and even got, eventually) "Grin and Bear It". Apparently "Law" was a ripoff of "They'll Do It Every Time", a comic I just stumbled upon in my search for "Law".
It may be that the administration should not be so quick to celebrate this decision.
It is the second time in a major case where Chief Justice Roberts have disregarded the arguments of both Congress and the Executive Branch and just made up his own interpretation of a statute. That can hardly be good for the country in general either, since it sets a precedent for the Supremes, and perhaps not just the Supremes, to just make shit up and proceed to make decisions based on their own ideas of what they would like to have done.
Epstein on today's ruling (podcast)
The thinking here is that what Roberts have done is not just a review of a Congressional statute or an Executive action, but is in itself an executive action.
I learned to read at my grandmother's knee. She was a retired one-room schoolhouse teacher and she used the Sunday "funnies" to teach me to read at a very young age.
"Nancy" and "Louie" weren't much use but "Li'l Abner", "Pogo", "Little Iodine", "Dick Tracy" and all the rest were my preschool ticket to literature.
I still read the comics when ever I have the chance fifty five years later.
And Justice Roberts sucks, big time.
One of my favorites was Andy Capp. I still quote him.
He told his wife, "Of course you are entitled to your own opinion. I just don't want to hear it, that's all!"
We already had EMTALA, which is a universal health care law. Was Obamacare designed as a revenue law to explicitly redistribute costs (i.e. "shared responsibility"), combined with a legal triage function (e.g. Michelle Obama's job)?
Since insurance companies are regulated with slim margins, when did health care costs become inflated and unaffordable? Was it a compensatory or principle adjustment a la Unions, welfare, outsourcing, excessive immigration, etc.?
As for semantic games, that reached its maturity with classification of human life as commodity under the pro-choice doctrine, and progressed with institutional establishment of class diversity policies.
It is doubtful that Roberts has done us a favor.
If Obamacare (or now SCOTUScare) is unsustainable, the longer it lasts, the worse the pain is going to be.
It would have been better if Roberts had cut off the life suppport to start with rather than coming up with his "tax" idea.
"Too bad Congress and the Executive screwed up the writing of this law so bad, but we like the law, so we are going to uphold anyway."
"Actually, w don't really know what it is we are upholding, but we are sure the intent is good, and surely someone can figure out the details later."
I sort of got Grin and Bear it back in the late 1960s. Smokey Stover, though, was something I never could quite figure out.
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