the wasserblawg

The legal (and music) world is abuzz in response to Chief Justice John Roberts citing Bob Dylan in his dissent in Sprint v. APCC Services . From the New York Times : Four pages into his dissent on Monday in an achingly boring dispute between pay phone companies and long distance carriers, John G. Roberts Jr., the chief justice of the United States, put a song lyric where the citation to precedent usually goes. "The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. " ' When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose .' Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965)." Alex B. Long, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and perhaps the nation's leading authority on the citation of popular music in judicial opinions, said this was almost certainly the first use of a rock lyric to buttress...