Physicians in Tennessee can prescribe hormones and puberty blockers to help a male child, but not a female child, look more like a boy; and to help a female child, but not a male child, look more like a girl.

— Justice Sotomayor (dissenting) in UNITED STATES v. SKRMETTI

— turning legal contradiction into clarity by mirroring syntax, and letting the structure do the rhetorical work of revealing inconsistency

And it seems the agents neither noticed the street sign for “Denville Trace,” nor the house number, which was visible on the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

— Justice Gorsuch in MARTIN v. UNITED STATES

— using the “neither . . . nor” construction to highlight oversight through grammatical balance, and giving equal weight to two missed facts with elegant symmetry

To do so, it substitutes novel linguistic labels for traditional statutory interpretation; mistakes outlier definitions for exemplars; and improperly imports attributes of one provision into another.

— Justice Thomas (dissenting) in BONDI v. VANDERSTOK

— delivering critique through parallel verbs that align in tense and tone, and putting forth a layered critique through parallel phrasing of three legal errors

The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal.

— Justice Sotomayor (dissenting) in TRUMP v. J.G.G.

— stacking verbs in perfect sequence to create momentum, and escalating legal and moral force through parallel verbs and contrast to underscore the constitutional risk

Consider, for instance, a babysitter who lands a job by fibbing about how she will use the money (for college savings, rather than a spring break trip), but otherwise fully and satisfactorily takes care of the child; a used car salesman who closes a deal by falsely claiming another buyer is coming to look at the car later that day, while truthfully disclosing all the pertinent details about the car; or a prospective housing developer who beats out competing bidders by lying about wanting to raise a family in the home, but pays the full amount of his bid.

— Justice Sotomayor (concurring) in KOUSISIS v. UNITED STATES

— creating rhythm by repeating grammatical structure, and guiding the reader effortlessly through three complex hypotheticals

Thus, the application of “heightened scrutiny” to sex classifications can be explained in large part by the fact that sex discrimination shares many characteristics with racial discrimination: it was historically entrenched and pervasive; it was based on identifiable and immutable characteristics; and it included barriers to full participation in the political process.

— Justice Alito (concurring) in UNITED STATES v. SKRMETTI

— reinforcing a legal analogy by echoing sentence structure across multiple clauses, and amplifying the weight of each point through perfectly matched phrasing