The Justices of the Supreme Court make their living with words. They read them, they write them, they speak them, they listen to them, and they rule with them. We currently have a Justice who uses words very poorly.
At her confirmation hearing before the Senate, Justice Jackson was asked to give a definition of “woman.” That’s a legitimate question, since many legal matters depend on whether a given person is a woman or a man.
Her answer was:
Jackson was of course dodging the question. Fine, that’s what you do when you’re being cross examined by a hostile questioner. But the unartfulness of her dodge was striking. A person trained and working with the tool of words should have been able to craft an answer along the lines of:
We all know that words can mean different things in different settings. In the case of the word “woman,” there is of course a traditional definition in genetics which is ‘a person with two X chromosomes.’ We also know that there are people in the world without two X chromosomes who view themselves as women. I respect their views of themselves, just as I respect the views of geneticists. I can’t say without the particular facts of a case in front of me how those views should be weighed, if at all, in a court of law.”
Blah, blah, blah, right? Yes, but that’s the point of an artful dodge – don’t give the questioner a sound bite. Jackson didn’t seem to recognize that she’d handed her questioner – and her present and future critics – a sound bite that will live forever.
the Aspen beat 