Today’s dissent by Justice Breyer in Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. contains the first ever Supreme Court citation to Boys’ Life magazine — and, if my search was accurate, the first citation by any court to a particular item in Boys’ Life magazine, setting aside references in lawsuits against the Boy Scouts.
The passage is:
Or a trade regulator might forbid a particular firm to make the true claim that its cosmetic product contains “cleansing grains that scrub away dirt and excess oil” unless it substantiates that claim with detailed backup testing, even though opponents of cosmetics use need not substantiate their claims. Morris, F. T. C. Orders Data to Back Ad Claims, N. Y. Times, Nov. 3, 1973, p. 32; Boys’ Life, Oct. 1973, p. 64; see 36 Fed. Reg. 12058 (1971).
And the reference is indeed to an anti-acne ad that appears in Boys’ Life, though I’m not sure where the Justice or his clerks got that citation: My search through the briefs in Sorrell revealed no reference to that particular item.