I'm Greta and Ruben, and this is a little happier.

One of my hobbies as a writer is rewriting official notices,

signs, and messages to make them more succinct.

I can't see a sign without trying to edit it for length and clarity in my mind.

It's an occupational hazard of writers.

And maybe it's a lawyer thing too.

I remember one afternoon during the time when I was clerking for

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Usually I ate in the clerks' dining room in the Supreme Court building itself,

but on this particular day some fellow law clerks and I had gone out to a restaurant for lunch

to celebrate a birthday.

On our return we were walking up to the Supreme Court building.

It's a beautiful monumental building and we all pause for a moment to look at it.

I looked at the inscription that appears in enormous letters across the front of the building

and read it out loud.

Equal Justice Under Law. One of my co-clerks said,

that's redundant. It doesn't need to say all that.

Why, I said?

Well, it could just say justice.

Justice means equal justice under law.

Well, he was right, but for once I think I prefer the wordier version, equal justice under law.

It's one of the great dreams of the United States.

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