Noah Feldman, Columnist

A Judge’s Vulgar Dissent Is a Loss for Everyone

March 20, 2026 at 11:30 AM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is unapologetic in his use of crude language. — Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is unapologetic in his use of crude language.
Video still via US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit

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A recent opinion by a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is a contender for the most vulgar piece of judicial writing in the 300-plus-year history of recorded judicial decisions in the English language.

The opinion in Olympus Spa v. Andretti — a dissent from the 9th Circuit’s decision not to rehear a case involving a potential conflict between transgender rights and free exercise rights — opens with this astonishing sentence: “This is a case about swinging d*cks.”