ABSTRACT
The "metalinguistic" perspective Elizabeth Mertz describes United States law students as acquiring is a particular perspective toward language and, crucially, texts. The Court's opinions are instruments for the perpetuation of traditional lawyerly scripts, or sequences of comprehensible behavior, and the creation of newer ones. In common-law systems, any reasoned judicial opinion may function as guidance in a subsequent dispute. Being a lawyer, or playing the law game, requires more than just sharing expectations, of course. It requires an appropriate setting and appropriate "props." In United States law, these props include legal materials, more often than not texts—hard-copy documents, bound books, electronic files. Grounding a judicial explanation in accounts of rational action—describing actors' past conduct or prescribing their future acts—helps lawyers and judges establish connections between legal discourse and what lies outside the "law-world." Judge Gorsuch's instructional opinions often present their subject matter explicitly in terms of layers of meaning.
