Bruce M. Selya, a federal judge who issued more than 1,800 opinions and was celebrated (and occasionally chided) for a sesquipedalian writing style — that is, his use of long words that sent readers scrambling for a dictionary — died on Feb. 22 in Providence, R.I. He was 90.
His family announced his death.
A Republican who was active in electoral politics before President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the bench in 1982, Judge Selya issued opinions that did not conform to a predictable conservative ideology.
Last year, he was part of a court panel that upheld Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity gun magazines, having continued to work as a senior judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston until his death.
In 1998, he struck down the use of racial preferences in student admissions to Boston Latin School in the first ruling from an appeals court that restricted affirmative action in public schools, a long-sought goal of conservatives.
On the other hand, he sided with a liberal understanding of the separation of church and state when he ruled in 2021 that Boston could bar a Christian group from flying a religious flag at a ceremony outside City Hall.
The United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed Judge Selya, saying that the free-speech rights of the religious group prevailed.
The U.S. District Court of Rhode Island, where Judge Selya began his career on the bench, called him “one of the most widely quoted jurists in America.”
His best-known law clerk in his 38 years as an appellate judge was Ketanji Brown Jackson, the future Supreme Court associate justice nominated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In a memoir, she described Judge Selya as “a brilliant, meticulous and scholarly practitioner of the law.”
In his 22 years as a corporate lawyer before joining the bench, Judge Selya bemoaned the sleep-inducing prose of typical legal opinions. He vowed to enliven his own writing with original vocabulary and colorful figures of speech.
He became known for obscure word choices — some extremely so. He preferred perscrutation rather than a simpler synonym, scrutiny; inconcinnate (unsuitable); and rodomontade (boastful talk).
The National Law Journal in 2008 published a guide to “Selyaisms,” compiling some of his favorite recondite words and phrases, to aid lawyers making their way through his opinions. The list included asseverate (declare), crapulous (unrestrained in drinking) and sockdolager (a decisive blow).
The judge was also a punster. In a case involving the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, he wrote in his ruling that “a lingerie manufacturer made a slip,” that “plaintiffs’ own filings place them in the tightest of corsets” and that the union had “played pantywaist.”
To some critics, such writing was needlessly opaque, even sophomoric. Bryan A. Garner, the editor in chief of Black’s Law Dictionary, once compared the judge to Holofernes, the pedantic schoolmaster who spouts Latinisms in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labor’s Lost.”
“Many of his words are not in most dictionaries and have been obsolete for a long time,” Mr. Garner told The New York Times in a 1992 article about the judge’s literary style. “To say ‘perscrutation’ instead of ‘examination’ is ludicrous.”
The judge did not accept the reprimand. “There are no such things as obscure words; there are just words that are temporarily abandoned,” he told The Boston Globe in 2006. “It’s part of my responsibility to resuscitate them.”
Juan R. Torruella, a fellow appellate judge on the First Circuit, told The Globe that he admired and sometimes repeated Judge Selya’s unique vocabulary. “One of his favorite words, ‘struthious,’ I like very much,” he said. “If people have to look it up, that’s OK. It makes them think about his decisions.”
struthious, adj., designating or of an ostrich or ostrichlike bird
Bruce Marshall Selya was born on May 27, 1934, in Providence to Herman Selya, a chemical engineer, and Betty (Brier) Selya.
He attended Classical High School in Providence and went on to Harvard, earning an A.B. from Harvard University in 1955 and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Harvard Law School in 1958.
He practiced corporate and real estate law from 1960 to 1982 in Providence, where he was active in state Republican politics. He ran unsuccessfully for attorney general in 1964 and was a longtime fund-raiser and kitchen-cabinet adviser to John H. Chafee, a governor and four-term U.S. senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. Selya managed Mr. Chafee’s first Senate race in 1976, and in an act of political patronage Mr. Chafee urged President Reagan to nominate him to the federal bench. He became the first Jewish federal judge to serve in Rhode Island, according to Jack Reed, the U.S. senator from that state.
Judge Selya was with the district court from 1982 to 1986, when Mr. Reagan named him to the First Circuit appeals court, which oversees much of New England as well as Puerto Rico.
He is survived by his wife, Cindy (Anzevino) Selya; his daughters, Dawn Selya and Lori Ann Young; his sister, Susan Jane Rosen; six grandchildren; and two great-granddaughters. A previous marriage, to Ellen Barnes, ended in divorce.
In 2005, Judge Selya was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which takes a second look at denials of government requests for wiretaps in national security cases.
He issued an opinion in 2008 that telecommunication companies must comply with government requests to eavesdrop on certain phone calls and emails of Americans suspected of being spies or terrorists.
Judge Selya stepped back from a full workload on the First Circuit appellate court in 2006, assuming senior status. But he continued to hear cases.
He told The Providence Journal in 2022 that he worked a five-day week from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. His eyesight had diminished, so his staff read documents to him. “It doesn’t stop me,” he said.
