Supreme Court Splits on Important Issue

In Kansas v. Marsh, the Supreme Court split over an important issue sure to have repercussions in many future cases: does the possessive form of a singular noun ending with the letter s require an additional s after the apostrophe? LegalTimes.com reports:

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Court (and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel Alito Jr., Anthony Kennedy, and Antonin Scalia), concluded that the Kansas statute was not unconstitutional. In reaching this conclusion, Thomas repeatedly referred to the relevant law as Kansas’ statute. In response, Justice David Souter wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and John Paul Stevens. The dissent revealed Souter’s bitter disagreement with both the substantive conclusion of the majority and the grammatical philosophy of the opinion’s author. Whereas Thomas apparently believes that whenever a singular noun ends in s, an additional s should never be placed after the apostrophe, Souter has made equally clear his conviction that an s should always be added after the apostrophe when forming a singular possessive, regardless of whether the nonpossessive form already ends in s.

It’s not surprising that lawyers so often disagree over grammar and usage, given that most lawyers spend a large portion of their working days writing. What is surprising, perhaps, is that those disagreement are often quite vociferous. For example, one partner for whom I work insists on a number of grammatical and typographical idiosyncrasies, such as requiring two spaces after a period, or the use of a double dash with a space on either side instead of an m-dash.