Chief justice explains his Bob Dylan quote and the reason for a missing 'ain't'
Bob Dylan is the most cited songwriter in judicial opinions, and the reason may be traced to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Dylan quotations increased after Roberts wrote a 2008 dissent arguing that parties in the litigation did not have standing, the New York Times reports in a Sidebar column. Roberts asserted that the parties didn’t have a direct, personal stake in the litigation to justify standing, and he quoted Dylan this way: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
Dylan actually sings “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” The lyrics are from “Like a Rolling Stone” from the Highway 61 Revisited album.
Roberts was asked about the Dylan quote during a Feb. 3 appearance at New England Law in Boston, the Sidebar column points out.
“Bob Dylan captured the whole notion behind standing,” Roberts said. “In that case, the party didn’t have anything at stake in the case and had nothing to lose, and the case should have been thrown out on that basis.”
The interviewer, New England law dean John O’Brien, asked about the missing “ain’t.” Roberts said “ain’t” is in the song “as performed” but “the liner notes show that it doesn’t have the ‘ain’t in it.”
“I’m a bit of a textualist,” Roberts explained.
The Sidebar column says it’s true that Dylan’s website posts the lyric as used by Roberts. The liner notes, though, did not have the lyrics, according to the Times. “The back cover was instead devoted to an extended surrealistic poem from Mr. Dylan that seemed aimed at confounding the intelligent layperson,” the story reports.
