New Online Reference Resource: U.S. Supreme Court Pronunciation Guide From the Yale Law School

From a SCOTUS Blog Post by Amy Howe:

When the Court resumes oral arguments in October, the Justices – along with the rest of us – will face an annual challenge:  how to pronounce the names of the parties in (just to name a few) cases like Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Kloeckner v. Solis, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, and Florida v. Jardines.  However, Eugene Fidell, a scholar and lecturer at Yale Law School, and a group of Yale students have solved this problem for many of the Court’s past cases with their Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States, which is hosted by the website of the Yale Law School library.

Direct to Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States (via Lillian Goldman Library, Yale Law School)
From the Guide:

The purpose of the Pronouncing Dictionary of United States Supreme Court cases, compiled by  YLS students Usha Chilukuri, Megan Corrarino, Brigid Davis, Kate Hadley, Daniel Jang, Sally Pei, and Yale University Linguistics Department students Diallo Spears and Jason Zentz, working with Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law Eugene Fidell, is to help conscientious lawyers, judges, teachers, students, and journalists correctly pronounce often-perplexing case names. Drawing on textbooks, recordings, accounts by litigants or counsel, pronunciation guides, journalism, and surveys, we identified those Supreme Court cases that are most susceptible of mispronunciation and determined the proper pronunciation. To be sure, several factors—including the passage of time, idiosyncratic pronunciation, and Anglicization—make this an inexact process. Where possible, we have ascertained and followed the litigant’s preferred pronunciation.

Read the Complete Blog Post

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