Deference

From the Norwood v. Vance (9th Cir. 2009) majority opinion:

The district court declined to give the proposed instruction because the meaning of deference would not be “clear to a lay person.” But “deference” is not Urdu or Klingon; it is a common English word. It may be true that deference has varied meanings, Dissent at 8515 n. 4, but so do most English words. If the district judge believed the term needed further context or definition, he could have provided it.

From the dissent:

I must, however, acknowledge that the majority is quite correct in intuiting that, unsurprisingly, there is no Klingon word for “deference.” See generally Marc Okrand, THE KLINGON DICTIONARY (Star Trek 1992).

Thanks to The Legal Geeks for the catch, and to Charles Chapman for the pointer.

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