September 2005

The judicial fashion statement of the Chief Justice wearing four gold stripes on his sleeves, while the sleeves of associate justices are unadorned, is a lot more recent than his official title, which, as Frederic Schwarz points out, dates to late in the nineteenth century. In fact it only dates to the middle of the late Chief Justice Rehnquist’s term, after he saw a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe.

One of the major characters in the operetta is the Lord Chancellor, a powerful position in the British government. He presides over the House of Lords, is the head of the judiciary, and sits in the cabinet. As Gilbert explains in the Lord Chancellor‘s opening song:

The Law is the true embodiment
Of everything that’s excellent.
It has no kind of fault or flaw,
And I, my lords, embody the law.

The Lord Chancellor’s elaborate official robes positively drip with gold, and Rehnquist—a Gilbert and Sullivan fan (as am I)—promptly had a scaled-down version, suitable to a republic, made up for himself.

When I was growing up on Long Island several decades ago, Chock Full o’ Nuts seemed the height of sophistication. From their advertisements, I knew that in Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee shops it was always the 1940s, with women wearing white gloves and men in sharp fedoras stopping in for a quick cup and a smoke before an evening at the theater. The soundtrack to these fantasies, of course, was the unforgettable Chock Full o’ Nuts jingle, sung in a lilting alto by Page Morton Black, the wife of the company’s founder:

“Chock Full o’ Nuts is that heavenly coffee 
Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy.”

(Originally, I’ve read, it was “Rockefeller’s money,” until the family made them change it.)

My colleague John Steele Gordon is correct to say that “Chief Justice of the United States” is the official title currently in use, but several points should be noted:

(1) As a lowercase, descriptive title, “chief justice of the Supreme Court” is entirely unassailable. In journalistic usage we often see it contracted still further to “Supreme Court Chief Justice,” which isn’t wrong either, just informal.

(2) Insisting on the use of official titles in all cases can lead to madness. I don’t think any harm is done by talking of “Princess Diana” instead of “Diana, Princess of Wales,” which was her official title, or by lopping off the last three words from “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” or by speaking of the intersection of “Sixth Avenue and 14th Street” rather than “Avenue of the Americas and West 14th Street.”