Reclaiming the Singular They in Legal Writing
![handle is hein.journals/jalwd19 and id is 65 raw text is: ARTICLE
Reclaiming the Singular They
in Legal Writing
Robert Anderson*
Introduction
Legal writing has a pronoun problem. The problem arises where a
sentence calls for a generic pronoun to refer to a third-person singular
generic noun. Generic nouns are gender-neutral, and include definite
nouns such as baker lawyer or, as in the following sentence, plaintiff.'1
When a plaintiff commences an action by service of process, must
also file the complaint with the court. In the twentieth century, legal
writers commonly filled the blank with he, or, he or she. Today, both of
those pronouns are disfavored: the first as sexist,2 the second as awkward.3
English speakers and writers commonly fill the blank with they,
as in they must also file the complaint with the court or Please ask
* Professor of the Practice of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Thank you to the University of Denver for
funding a sabbatical for this project. I am grateful to my editors Amy Griffin at the University of Colorado Law School
and Aliza Milner at Syracuse University College of Law, whose experience as legal writing teachers sharpened the analysis.
Hayden DePorter not only provided able research assistance but also supplied inspiration. Michelle Penn guided the
historical research, unearthing primary sources that provided some of the earliest examples of American legal writing
during the Colonial period. Chasen Miller and Megan Uren rescued the article with further research assistance in the final
stage. Thank you also to the Rocky Mountain Legal Writing Scholarship Group, led by Nantiya Ruan. The Group's critiques
sharpened my thinking and focused the product. Dennis Baron's decades-long investigation into the history of the singular
third-person generic pronoun in modern English made this work possible. The remarkable depth of his scholarship is
matched only by its astonishing breadth.
1 See DENNIS BARON, WHAT'S YOUR PRONOUN 153 (2020) (referring to a generic noun as a definite noun, and distin-
guishing definite nouns from indefinite nouns like everyone or someone); Greg Johnson, Welcome to Our Gender-Neutral
Future, VT. B.J., Fall 2016, at 36, 36. (Generic nouns are those that can refer to either gender, as in, A lawyer must always
follow court rules when writing his brief.).
2 Tom Cobb, Embracing the Singular 'They; NW LAw., May 2019, at 12, 14 (Writers who continue to use 'he' in this way
risk being seen as sexist, out of touch, or intentionally flouting usage norms to make a political point.); see Ann Bodine,
Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar: Singular 'They Sex-Indefinite 'He and 'He or She', 4 LANGUAGE IN SOC'Y 129, 129
(1975) ([T]hird person pronoun usage will be affected by the current feminist opposition to sex-indefinite 'he'); Judith
D. Fischer, Framing Gender: Federal Appellate Judges' Choices About Gender-Neutral Language, 43 U.S.E L. REv. 473, 481
(2009) (Studies reported a decline in the use of masculine nouns and pronouns as generics, with one study finding a notable
decline in their use in American newspapers in magazines between 1971 and 1979:').
3 H.W. FOWLER, A DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE 391-92 (1926); Cobb, supra note 2, at 15.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jalwd19&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Reclaiming the Singular They in Legal Writing
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