The Scrivener
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 54 |
Which Court Said It Better?
By Scott Moise.
As if being a judge were not hard enough, a court's written opinions are published for all the world to see. And they are not just published, but are also carefully analyzed and relied on by lawyers and the public. With so many opinions being written and published — many times with a short turnaround — grammatical and spelling mistakes happen. Below are some examples of opinions that got it right, and some that did not.
The quotations below are taken verbatim from federal and state court opinions. Definitions are from Merriam-Webster Dictionary and its website unless otherwise noted.
* Unchartered/Uncharted
(1) "In short, the Court's new and uncharted course will inhibit law enforcement and 'keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come.' "
(2) "In some respects, the Court is sailing into unchartered waters in resolving the issue."
ANSWER:
Professor Paul Brians explained the difference between these two words:
"Unchartered" means "lacking a charter," and is a word most people have little use for"Uncharted" means "unmapped" or "unexplored," so the expression meaning "to explore a new subject or area" is "enter uncharted territory." Similarly, it's uncharted regions, waters, and paths.
Paul Brians, https://brians.wsu.edu/ 2016/05/19/unchartered-uncharted.
Number (1) above is correct, as you would expect from the United States Supreme Court. See Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2234 (2018) (Kennedy, J., dissenting).
* Supposably/Supposedly
(1) " 'The similarity that is required is, in short, a similarity in essential circumstances, or, as it is usually expressed, a substantial similarity, i.e., a similarity in such circumstances or conditions as might supposably affect the result in question.' "
(2) "Because Fishburne has failed to show that the supposedly exculpatory video evidence was either newly discovered or suppressed, and because the evidence would not have been likely to result in acquittal, the court denies Fishburne's second motion for a new trial."
ANSWER:
"Supposedly" means "allegedly," a word that lawyers use all the time and understand to mean a statement or fact that is assumed to be true until proven otherwise. As for "supposably," some people, possibly even the Scrivener, believed it was not even a real word. That would have been...
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