Rock ‘n roll has finally pervaded America’s highest halls of justice, in the form of Chief Justice John Roberts invoking Bob Dylan in a Supreme Court ruling:

“The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “ ‘When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’ Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).”

Alex B. Long, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the citation of popular music in judicial opinions, said this was almost certainly the first use of a rock lyric to buttress a legal proposition in a Supreme Court decision. “It’s a landmark opinion,” Professor Long said.

But note, it’s not a precise lyrical quote:

What Mr. Dylan actually sings, of course, is, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

It’s true that many Web sites, including Mr. Dylan’s official one, reproduce the lyric as Chief Justice Roberts does. But a more careful Dylanist might have consulted his iPod. “It was almost certainly the clerks who provided the citation,” Professor Long said. “I suppose their use of the Internet to check the lyrics violates one of the first rules they learned when they were all on law review: when quoting, always check the quote with the original source, not someone else’s characterization of what the source said.”

But it’s the thought that counts.

So there’s a forty-something year lag on when popular music becomes acceptable game for Supreme Court-level legal discourse. I guess that means we’ll see a future jurist drop references to 50 Cent, circa 2038. Or even cite the core concept behind the late Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems”, perhaps with empirical line-chart evidence.