The 40th anniversary of the famous US Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion was this week, in the coverage of it most all journalists I’ve heard talking about it referred to the case as “Roe v. Wade”, which I thought was typical when referring to cases of the sort - “Brown v. Board of Education”, “Bush v. Gore”, etc.
On NPR I heard an interview with a Yale law professor who repeatedly referred to the case as “Roe against Wade”, which to me sounded quite jarring - but IANAL, and figure she must know what she’s talking about - is this usage more correct?
Well, the v stands for versus which basically is synonymous with “against”.
So I suppose, linguistically at least, “Roe against Wade” means the same as “Roe v Wade”.
I’ve never seen nor heard it used that way, though. I don’t know if there’s some legalistic specific meaning to versus in this context. Lawyers speak a different language.
The convention in the English tradition is to say “and” or “against” where the “v” appears. It is one of those Shibboleths that allows us to spot wannabes.
Thus, Donoghue v Stevenson is pronounced Donoghue and Stevenson. “Against” tends to be reserved for cases where one of the parties has an “and” in its name, like Smith against Fire and All Risks Insurance Co.
I don’t know if Americans observe the convention with the same rigour that Commonwealth countries do, but I can imagine that a law professor who might be slightly Anglophile being a stickler about it.
I remember being at Uni when Kramer v Kramer was released, and there was a lot of buzz about it. You could immediately spot the law students: they all said “Kramer and Kramer” when everyone else said “versus”.
In the U.S., it’s always Roe v. Wade, which is marked down from the original Roe vs. Wade.
When the ruling came out, it was standard for newspapers to name court cases with vs. (even in headlines, where space is never wasted). See, for instance, Brown vs. the Board of Education or Plessy vs. Ferguson in newspaper accounts.
Legal documents, however, have always used “v.” instead of “vs.” Since 1973, it’s become common to refer to the cases the way lawyers did.
This is strange. Any good logician knows that “Roe v Wade” is “Roe or Wade” not “Roe and Wade.” However, a mathematician might argue for “Roe join Wade.”
Well, no doubt it should be “Roe ∧ Wade” but how many newspapers have ∧ in their font set? And how many readers (outside the Straight Dope audience of course) would know how to pronounce that, any more than they know how to pronounce “Row ∨ Wade”?
Interesting. I’ve never heard this before. But I don’t hang around much with American lawyers, either.
I’m pretty sure I have never heard any commentator use “and” or “against” instead of “vee” or “versus”. If I had heard that Yale law professor, the use of “against” would have stopped me cold.
A few American lawyers pronounce the <i>v.</i> as “against” or “and” in the English tradition, but most say “vee” or “versus.”
The logical term is <i>v</i>, not <i>v.</i>, even though it is in origin an abbreviation of Latin <i>vel</i>, essentially equivalent to the English <i>and/or</i>. Latin for the exclusive <i>or</i> is <i>aut</i>. Therefore, pronouncing <i>v.</i> as “or” would be incorrect. There is a term in legal Latin, <i>vel non</i>, which means “or not.” Since it’s always the exclusive <i>or</i>, I’ve always wondered if it shouldn’t be <i>aut non</i>. But then, I also wonder if <i>amicus curiae</i> shouldn’t be <i>amicus curius</i>. I await clarification by a better Latin scholar.
We use vBulletin code on the Dope. Angle brackets are replaced by square brackets, along with a few other differences from HTML. (Mainly, links are introduced by “url=” instead of “a href=”.)
v., of course, is not the logical / but the abbreviation for the English word versus, borrowed from the homonymous Latin past participle with a meaning of “overturned” – that being what the plaintiff is praying the court to do with the state of affairs where the defendant is unconvicted of crime or the respondent remains in possession of money, land, or goods the plaintiff claims are rightfully his. Though I’m sure you’re aware of this, I thought in view of the symbolic-logic excurus it needed repeating.
Amicus curiae is of course “friend of the court”, i.e., someone submitting a brief in the interest of justice to provide the court with information it would not have available without the brief. *Curiae *is the genitive of curia, “court”. I don’t think there is a Latin adjective curius.
Pronouncing ‘v’ as ‘vee’? Egads that’s stupid. It’s not a middle initial, its an abbreviation for a common word. Go the extra emm and stay the friggin’ correct word! It’s not even taking away a full ess of your life to do so.
Does “usage” mean “pronunciation” in your language? v vs against does not seem to be a pronunciation issue. It’s a usage issue (as specifically mentioned).