A former clerk to Judge Selya, a senior judge on the First Circuit with a penchant for using neglected words, penned this tribute to his judge (and his judge’s vocabulary) recently in the National Law Journal. In one brief anecdote (my favorite from the article), the clerk recounts how he managed to work “crapulous,” a word he gleaned from a page-a-day calendar, into an opinion. Crapulous means suffering from excess food or drink, making the word a bit trickier to place than one might initially think (since decorum and proper usage would preclude simply referring to the crapulous briefing . . . ). Fortunately, Judge Selya had the opportunity to decide a case involving a bar serving a noticeably crapulous customer.

My previous posts about Judge Selya can be found here and here. A tip of the hat to one of my regular lurkers out there for pointing this article out to me!