Breaking Supreme Court News...

October 19, 2006 02:51 PM

...NBS actually agrees with Justice Souter! The possessive form of a singular noun ending with the letter "s" does require an additional "s" after the apostrophe!

In Kansas v. Marsh, the high court was split 5-4--not only on the constitutionality of Kansas's death penalty statute--but on the extremely important "s's" issue. In the opinion,

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Court (and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel Alito Jr., Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia), concluded that the Kansas statute was not unconstitutional. In reaching this conclusion, Thomas repeatedly referred to the relevant law as Kansas' statute.
In response, Justice David Souter wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. The dissent revealed Souter's bitter disagreement with both the substantive conclusion of the majority and the grammatical philosophy of the opinion's author. Whereas Thomas apparently believes that whenever a singular noun ends in "s," an additional "s" should never be placed after the apostrophe, Souter has made equally clear his conviction that an "s" should always be added after the apostrophe when forming a singular possessive, regardless of whether the nonpossessive form already ends in "s."

Souter is absolutely correct on this one. Strunk & White say so, and that is good enough for NBS.* But as always, we are intrigued by what Justice Scalia has to say,

In Marsh, Scalia wrote a separate opinion that concurred with the substance of the majority opinion but nonetheless revealed a clear ideological discord with Thomas. Unlike his colleague, Scalia appears to believe that most singular nouns ending in "s" still demand an additional "s" after the apostrophe. Thus, in his Marsh concurrence, Scalia repeatedly referred to the relevant law as Kansas's statute. He similarly added an "s" to form the words Ramos's and witness's.
Yet in other parts of the opinion, Scalia added only an apostrophe to form the words Stevens', Adams' and Tibbs'. Based on this, it would seem that he believes the extra "s" should be omitted if the existing "s" is preceded by a hard consonant sound. So, whereas Thomas makes his "s" determination based strictly on spelling, Scalia appears to look beyond the spelling and examine pronunciation as well.

Fascinating! But, we are torn by Justice Scalia's analysis. It makes sense, but we also agree with David Lat, over at Above the Law. It is too wishy-washy, and Sandra Day O'Connorish. We need more clarity from the High Court on this.

*Strunk and White also say "Do not affect a breezy manner." So clearly, NBS himself falls short of their rules, sometimes.