Once Upon A Time You Wrote So Fine

How can I be expected to take Chief Justice Roberts seriously after this:

The last chief justice liked light opera. The new one cites Bob Dylan.

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).”

When you got nothing?  C'mon!

...The Roberts citation is more problematic.

On the one hand, he showed excellent taste. “Like a Rolling Stone,” as Greil Marcus has written, is “the greatest record ever made, perhaps, or the greatest record that ever would be made.”

On the other hand, Chief Justice Roberts gets the citation wrong, proving that he is neither an originalist nor a strict constructionist. What Mr. Dylan actually sings, of course, is, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

It’s true that many Web sites, including Mr. Dylan’s official one, reproduce the lyric as Chief Justice Roberts does [So it does, at the Dylan site here]. But a more careful Dylanist might have consulted his iPod. “It was almost certainly the clerks who provided the citation,” Professor Long said. “I suppose their use of the Internet to check the lyrics violates one of the first rules they learned when they were all on law review: when quoting, always check the quote with the original source, not someone else’s characterization of what the source said.”

Nobody who has ever sung this song in the shower has gone with "When you got nothing you got nothing to lose".  However, I will not attempt to vouch for every live and cover version.

Comments

[windansea]

"When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

hmmm, when you got nothing, you got nothing

when you ain't got nothing, you do not have nothing, so you have something

I hope everyone understands Judge Roberts was just correcting some bad grammar on Dylans part. :)

[Rick Ballard]

What? No comment on the irony implied within Dylan's use of the double negative wrt the materialist aspect of modern life having been overlooked by the Chief Justice? What kind of exegesis is performed in these parts, anyway?

Geesh.

[windansea]

of course you could say "I ain't not got nothing" and then you'd still have nothing.

who's on first?

[Porchlight]

Well if you want to get technical, it's "When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose." Nothin' not nothing.

Quit throwing dimes to the bums TM.

[GMax]

I dont think anyone hoping to have an invitation to any Georgetown social events could possibly use the word "aint" and expect those invitations to keep pouring in. He is already on thin ice for not "growing" into the job as some of his predecessor did...

[GDLL]

Tom, Richard Cohen tried to paraphrase a Dylan song a couple of weeks ago and fell flat as well.

Shameless self-promotion here: Richard Cohen Gets One Wrong

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I think Roberts, like any good textualist, was simply referring to the more recent revision attributed to the original author as canonical.

[kim]

Freedom's just another word for nuthin' left to lose.
==============================

[Jane]

I expect Dylan to demand Roberts remove that citation or pay royalties, within 24 business hours.

[Daddy]

Well of course Justice Roberts got the words wrong. It's a maturity thing. Obviously when he first heard the lyrics he was so much older then.
He's younger than that now.

[Wild Bill]

If one downloads the mp3 for "Highway 61 Revisited," one does not hear the "ain't."

If that is what you sing in the shower, how do you make the line scan?