Stephen Horowitz is the Director of Online Legal English Programs at Georgetown Law.
How do you pronounce the names in Supreme Court cases like D’Oench, Duhme & Co. v. FDIC, The Ship Virgin v. Vyfhuis, or Ylst v. Nunnemaker?
Well, thanks to a diligent group of Yale Law students, there now exists the Pronouncing Dictionary of United States Supreme Court cases.
According to the website, “The purpose of the Pronouncing Dictionary of United States Supreme Court cases is to help conscientious lawyers, judges, teachers, students, and journalists correctly pronounce often-perplexing case names.”
For each case, there are two or three phoneticized spellings to help with pronunciation. Plus, if you click on the phoneticized pronunciation, you get an audio clip of the tricky name being pronounced.
Now if they could just teach us how to pronounce certiorari. 😉
Special thanks to Kirsten Schaetzel, English Language Specialist at Emory Law School, for bringing this great resource to my attention.
