Yes, Even Supreme Court Justices Make Typos

Supreme Court justices! They're just like us!

Every writer knows they owe a debt of gratitude to their copy editors. It may not seem like a glamorous job, but it can prevent some embarrassing mistakes. Turns out even folks with accomplished résumés like those of Supreme Court justices need the help every once in a while.

As reported by the National Law Journal, there were several gaffes that made it into the initially published decisions this Term, and were later corrected.

Here are the mistakes are, in all their glory:

In his Masterpiece Cakeshop concurrence, Clarence Thomas was done in by homophones and “painter’s palate” was corrected to “painter’s palette.”

French proved Stephen Breyer’s downfall — in his Ohio v. American Express opinion “lassez-faire” was changed to “laissez-faire.”

Anthony Kennedy made a few mistakes in his Masterpiece Cakeshop swan song for the majority — and I don’t (just) mean the holding — the citation of Newman v. Piggy Park Enterprises had to be changed to the proper Piggie spelling. Additionally, after the word “protects” the word “against” had to be added to this sentence “a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation” to properly describe Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

The word “depend” was subbed for “depends” in Sonia Sotomayor’s concurrence in Hughes v. United States to make the subject and the verb agree.

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“The Judicial Power of the United States” was changed to “[t]he judicial Power of the United States” in Samuel Alito’s dissent in Ortiz v. United States, since that’s how it’s written in original Constitution.

In Jesner v. United States, Justice Kennedy incorrectly described the facts of Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, mixing Paraguay with Peru. Yikes.

See, everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Even when you’re on the Supreme Court.


headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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