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Whenever UD hears the word, she thinks of …

OrthoGynol.

… [Arguing before the Supreme Court,] University of Michigan law professor Richard D. Friedman [said in answer to] a question from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, … that [something] was “entirely orthogonal” to the argument he was making…

… 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.”…

Margaret Soltan, January 12, 2010 9:40AM
Posted in: Scathing Online Schoolmarm

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9 Responses to “Whenever UD hears the word, she thinks of …”

  1. GTWMA Says:

    Very common to use the word in that way among statistics wonks.

  2. Caelius Spinator Says:

    It is a very important word in vector calculus (and in applications to statistics), which does not seem to have been a component of the Chief Justice’s education.

  3. Pete Copeland Says:

    Shouldn’t the headline be, “Whenever UD hears the word..”? Because there’s really nothing about the word generally or its specific use here that deserves any sort of scathe.

  4. RJO Says:

    Ah, but the exchange continued:

    JUSTICE SCALIA: Orthogonal, ooh.
    (Laughter.)
    JUSTICE KENNEDY: I knew this case presented us a problem.
    (Laughter.)
    MR. FRIEDMAN: I should have — I probably should have said –
    JUSTICE SCALIA: I think we should use that in the opinion.
    (Laughter.)
    MR. FRIEDMAN: I thought — I thought I had seen it before.
    JUSTICE SCALIA: Or the dissent.
    (Laughter.)
    MR. FRIEDMAN: That is a bit of professorship creeping in, I suppose.

  5. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Pete: Right you are. I’ll change it.

  6. Ben Brumfield Says:

    It’s also common in software engineering. Looks like we turned something from our education into a metaphor.

  7. Ben Brumfield Says:

    The corresponding post and comment thread over at the Volokh Conspiracy is worth reading.

  8. Polish Peter Says:

    OrthoGynol is orthogonal with unwanted pregnancy.

  9. Margaret Soltan Says:

    LOL, Polish Peter.

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