Yesterday was one of the most important days in American legal history! Federal judge Richard Leon ordered the Trump administration to stop construction of a new White House ballroom on the grounds of the somewhat recently torn down East Wing. And he did so by using a lot of exclamation points! In fact, he used 18 of them in a 35-page opinion. That’s a lot!
If we believe his Wikipedia page picture, Leon, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court in D.C. nearly 25 years ago by George W. Bush, actually looks like Seinfeld‘s George Costanza in disguise. He previously worked as a hand model, for the New York Yankees, as an architect, and in an unknown capacity at Vandelay Industries. He also loves using exclamation points in his opinions! Four times, he refuted White House arguments by saying “Please!” As in, “according to Defendants, any construction delay will undermine national security. Please!” At least he didn’t say, “b*tch, please!” but it’s implied.
Here are some other examples of the exclamatory function in Leon’s judicial prose: “the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the President’s own making!”; “This clearly is not how Congress and former Presidents have managed the White House for centuries, and this Court will not be the first to hold that Congress has ceded its powers in such a significant fashion!”; and “After all, the White House does not belong to any one man, not even a president!”
There’s a large percentage of the establishment, buttressed by Boomers and permanently terrified Gen-Xers on social media, who act like Trump’s attempts to build a grand ballroom at the White House are akin to him tearing out the Rose Garden to make way for a crematorium for illegal immigrants. The only thing that makes them madder is the Melania documentary. Leon, clearly, is the judge they want! This is the “People’s House,” they argue, even though most people don’t live there and will never go there. The renovation is privately funded and, in the end, will harm absolutely no one. But the real headline here is that a major judge has used exclamation points in a significant ruling like he’s a middle-schooler writing a mash note.
Imagine John Marshall using exclamation points, or Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., or Thurgood Marshall. During their long and unlikely friendship, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia never used exclamations in their judicial writings. William Howard Taft never used them. Also, he never got stuck in a bathtub!
But maybe American judicial writing would have been more exciting and easier to study if judges had been using exclamation points all along. According to Marbury v. Madison, which established judicial review, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is!” That’s pretty awesome. Rand and Ron Paul would have gone to bat hard for McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819: “The power to tax involves the power to destroy!”
“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal!” Brown v. Board of Education would go. That’s for sure. John Marshall Harlan’s brave dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson might have carried more weight if he’d written: “The Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens!” As Miranda v. Arizona might say, “You have the right to remain silent!” Please!
I do exclaim: we all know how this will end. President Trump will ignore the court’s ruling or find a way around it. He’s going to build his big, beautiful ballroom. And then he and his administration will say to Judge Leon: Bye, Felicia!
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Neal Pollack is the author of 12 semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction and is a three-time Jeopardy! champion.
