Law Humor

People, Please Stop Hiding Things in Justice Breyer's Pants

By Kevin Underhill

In my experience, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear.

[laughter]

Or, not my underwear . . . whatever.  Whatever.  I was the one who did it?  I don't know. I mean I don't think it's beyond human experience.

    -- Justice Breyer, during yesterday's argument in Safford Unified School District v. Redding.

The case involves a search of a 13-year-old girl by school officials who strip-searched her on suspicion of possessing an ibuprofen pill (that's Advil, folks) in violation of a strict no-drugs policy.  Justice Breyer was apparently trying to make the point that someone afraid of being caught might hide contraband just about anywhere, but used the wrong pronoun ("my" instead of "their," although I'm not sure the right pronoun makes it a lot better).

Justice Thomas is probably feeling pretty smug right now about his strict no-comments-from-the-bench policy.

Link: BLT: The Blog of Legal Times Magazine
Link: SCOTUS Oral Argument Transcript Page

Full post as published by Lowering the Bar on April 22, 2009 (boomark / email).