{"id":868407,"date":"2026-10-02T15:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T15:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/868407\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T15:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T15:54:15","slug":"justice-barrett-the-zombie-noun-slayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/868407\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Barrett \u2013 the zombie (noun) slayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suppose a Bond villain (or Dr. Evil<\/a>) demanded $1 million unless you read every word of a SCOTUS majority opinion. And just to make it interesting, he required you to choose from one of two opinions, each of which involves elections. The first opinion considers a statutory question: do mail-in votes need to be received on election day? The second seems more grandiose: can the federal government protect citizens from political actors who would dilute their votes? (Chief Justice Earl Warren called the second the most vital decision during his time on the court.)<\/p>\n

Which do you choose? Be careful, because you\u2019d probably choose the more dreadful option.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about the verbs.<\/p>\n

The first opinion, Watson v. Republican National Committee<\/a>, opens with a yarn about election laws and elections in the early United States, including absentee ballots for Civil War soldiers. Justice Amy Coney Barrett spins this yarn by choosing great verbs.<\/p>\n

The second \u2013 Baker v. Carr<\/a> \u2013 not so much. Even when protecting voting rights, Justice William Brennen, its author, drains verbs of all their life by adding suffixes and turning them into nouns. Dive into the opinion and you\u2019ll question whether you\u2019d rather stop reading and just pay the million bucks instead.<\/p>\n

So how does Barrett do it? Like the chief in Learning Resources v. Trump<\/a>, she often builds her sentences around a character as the subject and gives them a great verb to perform. Thus, we read, \u201cCongress may \u2018override\u2019\u201d most of a state\u2019s choices on elections. \u201cState legislatures may \u2018direct\u2019\u201d how electors are chosen. \u201cCongress may determine\u201d when electors are chosen. \u201cCongress allowed\u201d leeway to the states. \u201cCongress enacted\u201d an election day statute. Later, \u201cCongress intervened\u201d in the election day schedule. As for ballot deadlines, states at first \u201cimposed\u201d an election day deadline. But later, \u201c[s]tates began counting\u201d ballots received after election day.<\/p>\n

But Barrett also uses some subjects that aren\u2019t actors. When she does, look at the verbs! We read that the elections clause \u201cempowers\u201d state legislatures. Responsibility for certain matters \u201cbelongs\u201d to the states. The Constitution \u201clodges\u201d power in state legislatures. Fraud \u201cran rampant\u201d then \u201ccontinued to plague\u201d elections. But public assembly \u201chelped ensure\u201d voters were qualified.<\/p>\n

Joseph Williams calls these \u201cvirtual characters\u201d \u2013 otherwise inert objects or concepts that spring to life when given strong verbs. Whether she\u2019s using real actors or virtual characters as her subjects, Barrett writes with a preponderance of these strong verbs throughout the opinion.<\/p>\n

In Section II.A., she narrows the issue using active verbs. The plaintiffs \u201cchallenge\u201d this but \u201cdo not . . . challenge\u201d and \u201cdo not contend\u201d that or \u201cdo not object\u201d to something else. Likewise, the court \u201cdoes not consider\u201d constitutional arguments that are out of play.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in Section II.B., she hammers the verbs in setting out the texts to be construed. The statutes \u201cregulate,\u201d \u201cprovide\u201d and \u201cestablish.\u201d Congress has \u201cinserted\u201d a phrase, \u201ccreated\u201d an exception, and \u201cdefined\u201d election day. And the statute governing overseas ballots \u201creinforces\u201d her point. It \u201cconfirms\u201d and \u201crequires\u201d and \u201cestablishes\u201d and \u201cspecifies\u201d and \u201cmandates.\u201d As for the court\u2019s precedent, the court has \u201cdefined,\u201d \u201cobserved,\u201d \u201cemphasized,\u201d and \u201cexplained.\u201d<\/p>\n

In writing like this, Barrett (like Gorsuch<\/a> and Roberts<\/a> in previous posts) is creating prose that would satisfy normie English readers. In fact, she is modeling what Steven Pinker calls \u201cclassic style.\u201d In his book, \u201cThe Sense of Style<\/a>,\u201d Pinker describes this as \u201ca writer in conversation with a reader, direct[ing] the reader\u2019s gaze to something in the world.\u201d I would emphasize: directing the reader to \u201csomething real in the real world\u201d \u2013 not a lawyerly, interior world that contains only ideas and abstractions.<\/p>\n

A writer does this (in part) by keeping verbs as verbs rather than turning them into nominalizations \u2013 \u201czombie nouns.\u201d Zombie nouns once sallied forth as verbs, but now lurk in the crevices of sentences, sucking all the action out of texts. A lesser writer has (in Pinker\u2019s words) taken \u201ca perfectly spry verb\u201d and embalmed it \u201cinto a lifeless noun by adding a suffix.\u201d Instead of a Congress \u201cinserting,\u201d we would read about \u201cthe insertion of Congress.\u201d Instead of the court \u201cobserving,\u201d we would trudge through the court\u2019s \u201cobservations.\u201d Instead of the Constitution \u201clodging\u201d power with the states, we would choke on \u201cthe enlodgement of power\u201d by the \u201cConstitutional provision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Barrett, Brennen could have written an election drama. After all, Americans were having their votes diluted. But in Baker v. Carr, we almost never encounter either the Americans or the states who were doing the supposed dirty work. Instead, we read that a \u201c[d]ecennial reapportionment . . . was effected.\u201d Then \u201c[t]he 1871 reapportionment was preceded\u201d by other events. And 20 years later, \u201cthere were both an enumeration and an apportionment.\u201d Piling zombie on zombie he writes, \u201cThe injury which appellants assert is that this classification disfavors [them].\u201d As Pinker might describe it, Brennen unleashed a hoard of zombie nouns to \u201clumber across the scene without a conscious agent directing their motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than use strong verbs to create virtual characters, Brennen allows abstractions to passively exist on the page. So we read that Tennessee\u2019s apportionment \u201cstandard . . . is based\u201d on county population. And Brennen even declines Barrett\u2019s choice to center the court as a character. Instead, he writes that the \u201ccourt\u2019s disagreement . . . is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point, it looks like Brennen might make a virtual character out of the Tennessee Constitution. But then the story dies. Right after he tells us the \u201cTennessee Constitution provides,\u201d a clerk or secretary pastes in a 274-word block quote.<\/p>\n

We never read that \u201cTennessee reapportioned\u201d voting districts. In the 164 pages of opinions, appendices, and barnacled footnotes, zombies outnumber the living verbs like an apocalyptic hoard:<\/p>\n

(Re)apportion(s): 13(Re)apportioned: 20(Re)apportioning: 14(Re)apportionment(s): 229!<\/p>\n

As a result, Brennen and the Warren Court leave voters and readers waiting for Godot<\/a>. Spoiler alert \u2013 Godot never shows. Write like the Warren court today and an employer would likely place you in a performance improvement plan.<\/p>\n

To avoid that, slay zombies like Barrett. Add a step to your line editing that pays particular attention to the verbs. Of course, prefer actors as subjects and actions as verbs<\/a>. And prefer them together at the beginning of a sentence<\/a>. But also do a word-search for all the forms of \u201cto be\u201d \u2013 am, are, is, was, were, will be, have been. When you find them \u2013 especially a lot of them in one place \u2013 become a zombie hunter.<\/p>\n

Replace any \u201cto be\u201d that is sucking action out of the text. Sure, \u201cis\u201d works fine in a thesis sentence to show something exists or equals something else (e.g.,\u201cThe Constitution\u2019s system for Presidential elections is similar.\u201d) But when the nominalizations lumber forth \u2013 especially as unnecessarily passive subjects \u2013 kill the zombies (e.g., \u201creapportionment . . . was effected\u201d). Turn them back into verbs for your actors to perform (Tennessee reapportioned). If the best subject is not an actor, create a virtual character by deploying a real verb (\u201cthe Constitution lodges power\u201d).<\/p>\n

If you want to be read, make something happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suppose a Bond villain (or Dr. Evil) demanded $1 million unless you read every word of a SCOTUS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,8306,357041,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-868407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-open","tag-post-type-post","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}