Today's Brief
1 min · 1 src
SourcesReason
Law · Language
Westlaw search reveals 'martial home' typo in over 600 court opinions
The recurring slip from 'marital' to 'martial' in judicial writing is a small window into how typos propagate through legal databases that practitioners treat as authoritative.
600+
court opinions containing the typo on Westlaw
The facts · bedrock
A Volokh Conspiracy post on Reason notes that a Westlaw search for the phrase 'martial home' returns more than 600 court opinions containing the term as a typo for 'marital home.' The author encountered the phrase in a single court opinion before running the broader search.
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Reason
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How it's being framed
Same facts, different stories. We name the frame instead of pretending neutrality.
Linguistic curiosity frame
"A recurring courtroom typo swaps 'marital' for 'martial,' producing the unintentionally evocative phrase 'martial home' in hundreds of opinions — a small lexical glitch worth noting for its accidental aptness given how heavily armed some households actually are."