Supreme Court Justices' favorite words

An article in the Stanford Technology Law Review called USING ALGORITHMIC ATTRIBUTION TECHNIQUES TO DETERMINE AUTHORSHIP IN UNSIGNED JUDICIAL OPINIONS by William Li, Pablo Azar, David Larochelle, Phil Hill, James Cox, Robert C. Berwick, & Andrew W. Lo was recently discussed in the Atlantic Monthly. These computer scientists developed a program that analyzes signed opinions to spot words, phrases and sentence structure characterizing each justice’s writing style, then uses its findings to determine the author of unsigned opinions. Examples: Chief Justice John J. Roberts Jr. uses the words “pertinent” and “accordingly” a lot. He tends to start sentences with “here” and end them with “the first place.” He also likes the phrases “without regard to,” “given that” and “a general matter.”  Justice  Scalia favors the words “utterly,” “thinks” and “finally.” He also likes to start sentences with “of course” and “that is not.” Justice  Breyer likes to use the phrase “in respect to” and to start sentences with “for one thing,” “that is because” and “hence.” He likes to use the words “consequently” and “thing.”  Justice  Ginsburg often uses the words “observed” and “stated,” and likes to start sentences with “notably.” She likes the phrases “reasons stated” and “case concerns.” Justice Sotomayor often uses the words “observes,” “heightened” and “lawsuits.” Justice Clarence Thomas likes the phrases “the foregoing reasons” and “address whether.” He likes to begin sentences with “therefore” and “however.” Justice Alito favors the words “fundamentally,” “widely” and “regarded.” He also uses the phrases “set out,” “noted above,” “is generally” and “the decision of.” Justice Kagan tends to use the words “enables,” “earlier” and “matters,” and the phrases “result is” “after all” and “the theory.” Justice Kennedy likes to begin sentences with “though” and “the question is.” He favors ending sentences with “however.” He also uses the phrase “he or she.”