Scalia's 'jiggery-pokery' dissent spawns 'scalia4kids' tweets
As the U.S. Supreme Court’s term came to an end, Justice Antonin Scalia flaunted his word knowledge in dissents, accusing court majorities of employing “interpretive jiggery-pokery” and “mummeries.”
The jiggery-pokery comment, in a dissent to an opinion upholding nationwide subsidies under the health-care law, spurred tweets that led to a Twitter challenge: What would books be titled if they were written by Scalia? Above the Law has a story.
One of the early tweets, by University of California at Irvine law professor Richard Hasen, suggested a law review article was in order. “Who is writing the law review article: ‘From Argle-Bargle to Jiggery-Pokery: Toward a Theory of Scalian Textualist Putdowns’?” he asked.
Los Angeles Times op-ed editor Juliet Lapidos responded, “More importantly, which clever NYC book editor will ask Scalia to pen a children’s book?” Above the Law’s Joe Patrice retweeted the exchange with the hashtag #scalia4kids and dared Twitter writers to come up with some names.
Above the Law prints some of the suggestions, including these:
• Nancy Drew and the Case of the Argle-Bargle. From @Kathryn1
• Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight autonomy over your womb. From @djsziff
• Charlie and the Closely Held Christian Chocolate Factory. From @MoralHazardPay.
• The Little Engine That Could Not Do Anything Unless The Framers Intended It. From @ThorntonMcEnery
Those who like to poke fun at Scalia have another option: a Scalia insult generator from Slate.