Is It Okay To Correct A Supreme Court Justice’s Pronunciation?

The way Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said “antecedent” was so unusual that Regent University School of Law professor James Duane said, “I could not have been the only one in the courtroom who needed to hear the word two or three times before having any idea what the justice was trying to say.” Kagan pronounced the word “an-TESS-a-dent.” Ann O’Connell was the lawyer before the court that day who had to decide whether to mimic Kagan’s odd pronunciation, or follow up with the normal pronunciation of “ant-a-SEED-ent.” O’Connell opted to pronounce the word as she normally would. Duane said, were he in that position, he would have repeated the justice’s pronunciation. In a previous case, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist pronounced the litigant’s name “DAW-buhrt” rather than the French pronunciation, “Doh-BAIR.” After the lawyer for the Daubert family repeated that pronunciation, it stuck, and is now the accepted pronunciation for the case.