From “Sexsomnia” to “Stash-house Sting”: Best Legal Words of 2014
by Ken Bresler
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, January 5, 2015
The best legal words of 2014 weren’t necessarily coined or first used this year, but they did make a splash. And they do not appear in the 10th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, which was published in 2014. Here are my definitions of the past year’s seven best legal words.
7. DMCA. verb. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), for a copyright owner to send a takedown notice to an Internet Service Provider, demanding it remove Internet content allegedly infringing a copyright. See 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(1)(C).
Marvel Studios’ trailer for The Avengers 2 leaked onto a website, “Marvel promptly DMCA’d,” reported the blog Above the Law in October 2014. “Marvel DMCA’d the pants off of the leak.”
6. rehoming, re-homing. noun. Practice in which parent(s) transfer an adopted child, no longer wanted, to another home, often with a simple power-of-attorney letter or a notarized statement.
In April 2014, Wisconsin became the first state to make it illegal to advertise a child older than one year for adoption or custody transfer, unless the advertiser had a license from the state. In Summer 2014, Louisiana banned nonlegal adoptions. Both developments were reported in The ABA Journal. The sad phenomenon of rehoming often follows international adoptions that adoptive families decide aren’t working. And the rehoming is often disastrous for the child.
5. revenge porn statute or law. noun. Statute providing criminal and/or civil penalties against a person for posting online images of a former spouse or lover who is nude, partially nude, and/or engaged in sex and who has not given permission for the online posting.
About a dozen states have such statutes. In December 2014, a criminal defendant was convicted under California’s law for the first time, The Los Angeles Times reported.
4. sexsomnia. noun. Sleep disorder in which a person can engage in sex while sleeping, sometimes offered as a defense to sex crimes. [sex + [in]somnia].
In September 2014, a Swedish appeal court overturned a 26-year-old man’s rape conviction because he was not conscious when he engaged in sex, Agence France-Press reported. It wasn’t the first use of the defense in the world; The Daily Mail reported the defense has been offered in the U.K. since at least 1996. But the defense is not always labeled “sexsomnia.”
3. stash-house sting. noun. Controversial sting involving a confidential informant who recruits confederates to raid a stash or shipment of illegal drugs, when no such stash or shipment exists, whereupon the confederates are arrested for drugs, weapons, and/or conspiracy.
On December 4, 2014, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of indictments in a stash-house sting case. It questioned “the wisdom of the government’s expanding use of fake stash house sting operations” but found that under its precedent, such stings do not violate due process or “cross the line into outrageous government conduct.” (The decision, No. 14-50129 and No. 14- 50285, was unpublished.)
2. verein, verein law firm, law-firm verein. noun. Pronounced “fair-INE,” from the German for “association” or “network.” A centuries-old Swiss umbrella-like structure in which two or more law firms in different cities operate under one name without merging. For example, a law firm in one country could expand into a second country by having a law firm there use the first law firm’s name. The second law firm retains its structure, finances, and profits, and pays marketing and branding fees to the first law firm. Or two firms in the same country could form a verein and use an amalgamation of the two firms’ names without merging.
Verein law firms hit the news, specifically Newsweek, when John Wayne Enterprises, the estate of the actor nicknamed “Duke,” marketed Duke Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Duke University objected and Duke’s estate sued the university. Before this contretemps, the law firm Norton Rose had represented the distillery. Fulbright & Jaworski represented the university. In mid-2013, the two firms had formed the verein called Norton Rose Fulbright.
Was there a conflict, as the distillery’s lawyers argued? Did the law firm represent both sides of the litigation? No, the university’s lawyers countered; it was just a verein. The ethical issue was not decided, because in October 2014, a U.S. District Court in California dismissed the suit, Newsweek reported.
1. dictumizer. noun. Creator or purveyor of dicta; person who reads too much into a dictum.
Justice Antonin Scalia used this word in his concurrence to Schuette v. BAMN (2014). However, he was not the first to use it; it appears in a 2011 self-published ebook castigating President Barack Obama.
Love him or hate him substantively, but Justice Scalia is a marvelous legal writer. Who else on the high bench has such a recognizable style that it deserves an eponymous adjective? My definition of “Scaliaesque” or “Scalia-esque” (although I’m tempted to write it as “Scalia-Esq.”): “Of or pertaining to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; his sharp and witty style of speaking, questioning, or writing; forceful and colorful legal writing; or originalist constitutional theory.”
“Scaliaesque” has been around too long to be a legal neologism. But Justice Scalia, who may have coined “dictumizer” independently of the earlier use, has brought to our attention the best legal word of 2014.