The Legal Speaker and Writer at the New Millennium, with an Application to Justice Souter

Abstract

In "Hurley" (the Boston Parade case), Justice Souter writes for a unanimous Supreme Court to strike down on First Amendment grounds the application of a Massachusetts anti-discrimination law, which protects (inter alia) gays and lesbians, to organizers of the parade. Certain prose oddities, together with the striking form of the opinion, signal Justice Souter's stress in rising to the occasion of permitting private prejudice to win the day on Boston's public thoroughfares. This essay analyzes closely the verbal and structural choices that evoke a distance or space between the adjudicator's detectable sense of justice in the case and his complex mustering of doctrine to parade towards the opposite outcome.

Key words: Souter, parade, expression, GLIB, law and literature