From the Scotus Blog: Lord and Lady Montague, Lord and Lady Capulet v. Friar Laurence Who Wanted to "Make Verona Great Again"

The line for the Jingle Ball, which took place (December 12, 2016) at the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, stretched down 7th Street and around the corner onto F Street. Groups of huddled teenagers and young couples, arm in arm, waited in the cold for the annual holiday concert, featuring artists who were "established, but not Stevie Nicks established," according to one (older) line-waiter.

Title page of the first edition of Romeo and Juliet; Wikipedia

A different crowd, dressed more soberly and warmly, was headed to another nearby destination — the Shakespeare Theatre Company — to fulfill their civic duty as jurors at the theatre group's 25th mock trial. Echoing Romeo and Juliet, ancient grudge had again broken to new mutiny, and a wrongful death suit filed by the Montagues and the Capulets against Friar Laurence found itself before a panel of distinguished judges: Justice Samuel Alito of the US Supreme Court, Judges Thomas Griffith, Brett Kavanaugh and Robert Wilkins of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

In the role of chief justice, Alito seemed quite comfortable with his opening declaration, as if he might enjoy one day being the real one: "We will hear argument in the case of Lord and Lady Montague, Lord and Lady Capulet v. Friar Laurence. Counsel."

Representing Friar Laurence, Elizabeth Prelogar, an assistant to the solicitor general, began by arguing that her client could not be legally considered a proximate cause in the deaths of the star-cross'd lovers because it was not foreseeable that his plan would fail. Although Friar Laurence’s advice that Juliet fake her death with a sleeping potion seemed questionable, Prelogar insisted, "all the polling uniformly showed the plan would succeed." Indeed, she maintained, "52% of Verona was still smarting" from the plan's failure.

Taylor Swift’s song Love Story, Prelogar continued, clearly indicates that the lovers' parents, especially Juliet’s 'daddy,' Lord Capulet, were to blame. Kavanaugh pushed back against this line of reasoning, pointing out that Swift's song has a happy ending. "We can't re-write history, we aren't the 9th Circuit," he said, taking a jab at the oft-reversed court of appeals; Alito seemed to particularly enjoy this remark.

The judges questioned Friar Laurence's motives, suggesting that the friar's primary interest was in glorifying himself, not providing spiritual counsel to the two children. Prelogar presented a much more humble portrait of her client: The friar only wanted to return Verona to a peaceful place in which people didn't bite their thumbs at one another in the street — to "make Verona great again."

The judges also wondered whether Friar Laurence had incurred liability through his decision to entrust his message to Friar John to a private email server. Prelogar pithily responded, "he really regrets that choice." "But when they go low," she continued, "the friar goes high, as in, really, really high; he's with Him."

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From the Scotus Blog: Lord and Lady Montague, Lord and Lady Capulet v. Friar Laurence Who Wanted to "Make Verona Great Again"

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