Look at these gems from the WSJ

One of my frequent off-ramps when I'm cruising the Information Superhighway is the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog. The blog is well-written and I almost always find something interesting related to the practice of law. Here are two gems I found today:

A recent lawyer joke John McCain has been using on the campaign trail:

What is the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?

One is a scum sucking bottom dweller. The other is a fish.

###

And check out this awesome entry about a federal circuit court judge:

###
It’s not often that a former judicial clerk breaks silence to dish on his old boss. After all, Ed Lazarus, a former Harry Blackmun clerk, caught some flack when he published his Supreme Court tell-all. We don’t have anything that salacious for you today. But we’re practically crapulous with joy to see that, in this week’s National Law Journal, Frederick Brodie has penned a rodomontade asseverating the talents of First Circuit Judge Bruce Selya, Brodie’s former boss. Brodie, now a litigation partner at Pillsbury Winthrop, has compiled a salmagundi of Selya’s legendary vocabulary words, most of which are, to say the least, ultracrepidarian to our pedestrian knowledge.

In a “Guide to Selyaisms,” Brodie writes that Judge Selya, who has authored more than 1,250 federal opinions, is well-known for working into his opinions selections from his “arcane vocabulary, which has provoked frequent head scratching by counsel.”

Law Blog readers, here are some of Selya’s best head-scratchers, courtesy of Brodie. See if you can work one into a brief, a memo, an email, or even better, a client conversation.

Defenestration. Don’t walk past an open window if Selya is inside writing an opinion: He is liable to defenestrate anything and everything. Items thrown out the window in Selya opinions include speedy trial claims, punitive damages awards, arbitral awards, claims of co-fiduciary liability and laws that unduly favor in-state interests. The latter, Selya has noted, “routinely will be defenestrated under the dormant commerce clause.”

Philotheoparoptesism. Philotheoparoptesism refers to the practice of disposing of heretics by burning them or boiling them in oil. Another judge challenged Selya to include this word in a decision, which resulted in its sole reported usage (in secular courts, at least). For the record, Selya declined to consign a misguided prosecutor “to the juridical equivalent of philotheoparoptesism.”

Repastinate. To repastinate means to plow the same ground a second time. When considering appeals that raise previously decided issues, Selya and his colleagues have come down firmly and repeatedly on the side of “no repastination.”

Sockdolager. A sockdolager is a final, decisive blow. Selya’s published opinions deliver almost 60 sockdolagers, which is more “sock” than one finds in the decisions of the rest of the federal judiciary.

Thaumaturgical. The 1st Circuit takes a dim view of magical arguments, or what in one opinion Selya called “thaumaturgical feat[s] of rhetorical prestidigitation.”