You say “a-mee-cus,” Justice Breyer says “a-mike-us”

As readers of this site are well aware, the Supreme Court is deeply divided on a wide range of consequential issues. How should the justices consider history when they are interpreting the Constitution? When should the court grant requests for temporary emergency relief, and how much of an explanation should it provide when it acts on those requests? How much power should courts and the executive branch wield?

Without downplaying the seriousness of these issues, there are other – significantly less weighty – issues that also intractably divide the justices, along with the lawyers, journalists, and scholars who follow the court.

The “emergency docket”?

To find such an issue, you don’t have to go any further than the requests for temporary emergency relief mentioned above. Those requests (along with basically everything else that is not on the court’s merits docket) have long been known as the “emergency docket,” as Justice Elena Kagan referred to it during a recent appearance at a judicial conference in California. But in his own appearance at a judicial conference in Missouri, Justice Brett Kavanaugh referred to it as the “interim orders docket” – perhaps a nod to the fact that the court often takes weeks, if not months, to rule on the requests, undermining the idea that there is an “emergency” at hand.

Neither justice used the term “shadow docket,” a phrase coined a decade ago by University of Chicago law professor William Baude and made famous in the 2023 bestseller of the same name by Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck. (Though Kagan used this phrase in a 2021 dissent.) Baude intended the phrase to signal the extent to which the court operated outside of public view – in the shadows, so to speak – but some justices are not a fan of it. In a 2021 speech, Justice Samuel Alito criticized members of the media for using the “sinister” phrase, contending that it depicted the court as “having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways.”

In the last year or so, as requests for temporary relief have both increased and continued to move at relatively slow paces, other court watchers have proposed alternative terms to describe the emergency docket.

Even the Dispatch Extended Legal Universe, as we like to call it here at SCOTUSblog, is divided. David French, the New York Times columnist who is a “permanent guest” on the Advisory Opinions podcast, prefers the term “equity docket,” because the court considers (among other things) the fairness of granting relief.

David Lat, the author of the Original Jurisdiction Substack and the founder of the legal news site Above the Law, thinks it should be the “short-order docket.” In a recent Substack post, Lat embraced the comparison to cooking. “Observers of the Court need to remember,” he wrote, “that what we’re getting on the short-order docket isn’t the same as what comes out of the merits docket, where the justices have the benefit of full briefing, oral argument, and way more time.”

SCOTUSblog executive editor (and Lat’s husband) Zach Shemtob is a fan of the term “interim-relief docket,” on the theory that it most accurately describes what the court is doing with requests for emergency (or emergency-ish) appeals. And as the editor, Shemtob had the last word in SCOTUSblog’s StatPack, referring to it as the “so-called emergency/shadow docket.”

Foreign languages are hard

According to one 2017 story, less than 3% of U.S. students study Latin. That may help to explain the disagreements on how to pronounce two key legal terms that are common in Supreme Court proceedings. The first is “amicus,” meaning “friend of the court.” It’s the title of the podcast co-hosted by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern of Slate, who pronounce it “am-a-cus.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Kavanaugh voted together 91% of the time during the 2024-25 term. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that they also pronounce “amicus” the same way: “a-mee-cus.” (Lawyer Roman Martinez, who clerked for both men, also says it that way.)

Justice Stephen Breyer, who retired from the court in 2022, took a different approach to the word. He pronounced it “a-mike-us” – a pronunciation that his fellow justices rarely, if ever, imitated.

One surefire way to avoid the controversy? Eschew the legalese and just say “friend of the court.”

Lawyers seeking review of a lower-court decision file what is known as a “petition for a writ of certiorari” – a brief seeking review of that decision. Like “amicus,” the word “certiorari” is Latin, meaning “to be more fully informed.” If the petition is granted, then the lower court sends the Supreme Court the record in the case so that it can fully review it.

That process may be relatively straightforward, but the pronunciation of “certiorari” is not, as explored in an Advisory Opinions episode in June. The justices pronounce the word at least three different ways. Justice Sonia Sotomayor says “cer-sha-are-ree,” while both Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Alito say “cer-shore-rahr-ree.” Roberts, for his part, uses “cer-shore-rare-rye.”

Unlike the justices, many of us never need to say the word out loud. If you do, there are at least two other options: You can use the popular abbreviation “cert.” – about which there is no dispute – or (once again) skip the legalese altogether and refer to a “petition for review.”

Friend or foe?

What do you call the lawyer sitting on the other side of the lectern from you? At some point after his arrival at the court, Roberts – perhaps hoping to foster an atmosphere of collegiality – began to refer to an arguing lawyer’s opponent as “your friend on the other side.” It’s a bit of a mouthful, particularly when you try to turn it into a possessive (“your friend on the other side’s”?), so it’s sometimes shortened to “your friend.”

Not surprisingly, lawyers who argue regularly before the court have followed the chief justice’s lead. And so have several of the justices. During the 2024-25 term, Kavanaugh, Jackson, and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch all made references to “your friend (or friends) on the other side.”

During the 2024-25 term, Sotomayor agreed with Roberts in only 50% of closely divided cases, according to SCOTUSblog’s Stat Pack. She parted ways with Roberts on this question too, opting instead to use the terms “your adversary” and “opposing counsel,” which are commonly used elsewhere but arguably less collegial.

Here too there seems to be a fairly straightforward alternative (which the justices themselves also sometimes use): the lawyer’s actual name.

Sound bites

Amicus:

— During arguments in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, School District, Independent School District No. 279, Roberts says amicus at 00:03:56 and Martinez, a former clerk for Roberts and Kavanaugh, says it at 00:04:20.

— During arguments in Biden v. Texas, Kavanaugh says amicus at 01:00:17.

— During arguments in Berger v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Breyer says amicus at 01:05:28.

Certiorari:

— During arguments in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, School District, Independent School District No. 279, Sotomayor says certiorari at 01:14:03.

— During arguments in Martin v. United States, Jackson says certiorari at 00:38:14.

— During arguments in Starbucks Corporation v. McKinney, Alito says certiorari at 00:30:24.

— During arguments in Riley v. Bondi, Roberts says certiorari at 00:07:35.

Friend (or adversary) on the other side:

— During arguments in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Barrett says friend on the other side at 00:56:37. Attorney Hashim Mooppan says it at 00:19:52.

— During arguments in A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, School District, Independent School District No. 279, Gorsuch says friends on the other side at 01:05:05.

— During arguments in Esteras v. United States, Kavanaugh says friend on the other side at 01:04:06.

— During arguments in Perttu v. Richards, Jackson says friend on the other side at 00:59:18.

— During arguments in Cunningham v. Cornell University, Sotomayor says your adversary at 00:27:33. She says opposing counsel at 00:16:44 during arguments in Bouarfa v. Mayorkas.

— During arguments in Martin v. United States, attorney Frederick Liu says my friend at 00:26:30.