Welcome to the Blogosphere: Michigan State Bar Blog

Posted by Alan Childress

Just opened and already clever, the blog of the state bar of Michigan offers "comment, news and issues of interest to Michigan lawyers" plus really to many of us not so blessed.   Why blog when you cannot legally take positions except on core legal profession matters?  Well,

[W]ho better to compile a daily quick summary of news and observations on issues of immediate interest to Michigan lawyers than an organization that has a close and constant view of both the national picture and local and specialty bars in Michigan, as well as of the work of the Michigan Supreme Court, legislature, and governor’s office?

One of the first posts, Score One for the Maize and Blue, describes an exchange in the U.S. Supreme Court that actually must touch about five of Jeff Lipshaw's sweet spots:  the oral argument...

...piqued the interest of the lexophiles on the Court when he described a Justice Kennedy hypothetical as a valid issue for future cases but “entirely orthogonal to the issue at hand.”

Roberts: “I’m sorry. Entirely what?... What was that adjective? I liked that?"

Scalia: “I think we should use that in the opinion…or the dissent.”

Of course, we in Michigan all know that orthogonal means “at right angles,” having walked across the orthogon on campus many times.

My own sweet spot is hit when imagining C.J. Roberts saying the above in the droll southern voice of Fred Gwynne:  Say what?  The two what?  Did you say yoots? 

Fred was actually a Harvard grad playing a Yale grad.