Verbally Identical and Infinitely Richer: Quotation in US Supreme Court Opinions

Quotation is ubiquitous in American legal discourse, whether in academic scholarship, legal briefs or judicial opinions. And yet, although quotation is a common object of scholarly attention, there is very little scholarship on quotation in legal discourse. This article addresses this lack by exploring the United States Supreme Court’s quotation practices. Applying Herbert Clark’s model of joint activities, I argue that quotation in judicial opinions is one of the most important mechanisms by which the Supreme Court negotiates legal meaning and preserves its moral authority. Judicial quotation both allows the justices to make rhetorical claims that do not match legal substance and provides a site for the justices to negotiate the meaning of existing language and, therefore, the law itself.