Ideas and Trends - The Chief Justice, Dylan and the Disappearing Double Negative - NYTimes.com
Ideas and Trends - The Chief Justice, Dylan and the Disappearing Double Negative - NYTimes.com
Four pages into his dissent on Monday in an achingly boring dispute between pay phone companies and long distance carriers, John G. Roberts Jr., the chief justice of the United States, put a song lyric where the citation to precedent usually goes.
“The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “ ‘When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’ Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).”
Maybe one day there will be citations to film in legal opinions.
