THE CASE OF THE MISPLACED SEMICOLON
Our local Dog Trainer reports that a judge in San Francisco yesterday refused to halt the same-sex marriages that have been taking place there. But you have to look to an English newspaper to see what the litigants were discussing all day: a misplaced semicolon in the proposed order seeking the injunction.
The second judge told the plaintiffs that they would likely succeed on the merits eventually, but that for now, he couldn’t accept their proposed court order because of a punctuation error.
It all came down to a semicolon, the judge said.
“I am not trying to be petty here, but it is a big deal. … That semicolon is a big deal,” said San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren.
The Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund had asked the judge to issue an order commanding the city to “cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnizing marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before this court.”
“The way you’ve written this it has a semicolon where it should have the word ‘or,’” the judge told them. “I don’t have the authority to issue it under these circumstances.”
Until they write their proposed court order correctly, Warren indicated he would not order an immediate halt to the marriages of gays and lesbians that continued throughout the day across the street at City Hall.
Lawyers for both sides then spent hours arguing about punctuation and court procedures; the hearing was still continuing late Tuesday afternoon.
One wonders why the judge didn’t take out his judicial pen and replace the semicolon with the word “or.” The whole episode kinda makes the judge sound like, well, he is being petty. How interesting that no part of this anecdote appears in the Dog Trainer story.
UPDATE: In the comments, BoiFromTroy notes that a Dog Trainer story from yesterday, posted on the Dog Trainer’s internet site only, relates the bizarre semicolon anecdote. (You can read it here.) However, to my knowledge, the semicolon story has not made it into the print edition of the newspaper — the version most people read. It is certainly not in the story I linked at the beginning of this piece, which was the logical place for it.
We have a case of an elected official ignoring DUE PROCESS, and the judge is worried about punctuation.
Sometimes I wish I was an illiterate ignoramus, so this would not bother me.
Comment by Jim G. — 2/18/2004 @ 11:27 am
Talk about a “textualist.” How many minds will be blown when it becomes commonly known that Judge James Warren is former SCOTUS Chief Earl Warren’s son. Judge Warren the younger was outed several years ago by Out magazine.
Comment by MexRep — 2/18/2004 @ 11:44 am
US District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston, before whom I’ve had the pleasure and challenge of appearing several times, is a noted scold about archaic or imprecise language. At many a hearing, I’ve seen him take a proposed order or judgment submitted by one side or the other, uncap his red pen, and bleed all over it — slash! slash! interlineate! slash!
If a proposed order reads like this —
— (which unfortunately is fairly typical of what lawyers submit for judges to sign), he’ll slash it up until it reads:
— and then sign and date it. His revised version would have exactly the same legal effect as the flowery piece of crap he’d started out with. No one’s ever dared go to the Fifth Circuit to complain, “Judge Hughes’ order has a lot of strike-throughs and it isn’t very pretty!”
In the really olden days, the legitimacy and enforceability of court decrees was conditioned upon their having the appropriate wax seals and ribbons affixed. Judge Hughes well understands that his authority stems not from format or neatness, but from the Constitution and statutes that created his position and the oath he took to uphold and enforce them. His orders have the same effect whether they’re typeset and printed on fine vellum with a gold seal and red ribbon, or scrawled on a napkin. I have no doubt that he’d have promptly ejected from his courtroom the squabbling lawyers from yesterday’s charade in San Francisco.
I have enormous respect for Judge Hughes, even when I disagree with him. I find it impossible to respect a judge who would deny or even delay justice over a errant semicolon that could be struck or corrected, quite literally, with a stroke of his pen.
Comment by Beldar — 2/18/2004 @ 1:08 pm
The LAT article linked by Calpundit has it in the fifth paragraph…
Comment by boifromtroy — 2/18/2004 @ 2:58 pm
Judge Nyah-Nyah
Via Say Uncle, Patterico and Calpundit comes news that Superior Court Judge James Warren relied on a stray semicolon in a proposed order yesterday as his excuse for refusing to halt the phony, illegal “marriages” currently being performed in San…
Trackback by damnum absque injuria — 2/18/2004 @ 5:05 pm