..."One of my best friends was a quadriplegic, and I watched how a two-inch curb was like The Great Wall of China for him."
Then a pause.
"I think we do that with the opinions we write," he said. "We write them in a way that they're inaccessible to the average person." With that fascinating segue, he explained the logic behind his writing:
What I tell my law clerks is that we write these so that they are accessible to regular people. That doesn't mean that there's no law in it. But there are simple ways to put important things in language that's accessible. As I say to them, the beauty, the genius is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It's to put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence.
That's beauty. That's editing. That's writing. ...
...I didn't grow up speaking standard English at home...
I grew up with people who were not lettered people, most of whom couldn't read at all. It was not uncommon, when someone was signing something, they would simply make their mark. Or they would take your word for it. Or they would be upset if you asked them to sign a contract because their word was the contract. So in that environment these people, my relatives, my neighbors, treasured education in a way that people who were hungry would treasure food.
