Supreme Court having minute trouble with "orthogonal"

[Victor Steinbok]

The exchange sparked a couple of comments on law blogging site Volokh.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/11/AR2010011103690.html
> University of Michigan law professor Richard D. Friedman discovered
> that Monday when he answered a question from Justice Anthony M.
> Kennedy, but added that it was "entirely orthogonal" to the argument
> he was making in /Briscoe v. Virginia/.
> Friedman attempted to move on, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
> stopped him.
> "I'm sorry," Roberts said. "Entirely /what/?"
> "Orthogonal," Friedman repeated, and then defined the word: "Right
> angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant."
> "Oh," Roberts replied.
> Friedman again tried to continue, but he had caught the interest of
> Justice Antonin Scalia, who considers himself the court's wordsmith.
> Scalia recently criticized a lawyer for using "choate" to mean the
> opposite of "inchoate," a word that has created a debate in the
> dictionary world.
> "What was that adjective?" Scalia asked Monday. "I liked that."
> "Orthogonal," Friedman said.
> "Orthogonal," Roberts said.
> "Orthogonal," Scalia said. "Ooh."
> Friedman seemed to start to regret the whole thing, saying the use of
> the word was "a bit of professorship creeping in, I suppose," but
> Scalia was happy.
> "I think we should use that in the opinion," he said.
> "Or the dissent," added Roberts, who in this case was in rare
> disagreement with Scalia.


     VS-)

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