Tioga Coal Co. v. Supermarkets General Corp., 546
A2d 1, 5 (Pa. 1988)(quoting letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Williams
James). Lawyers often use metaphors in oral argument. For example, at the oral
argument in Bowers
v. Hardwick, where the Court considered a privacy challenge to a prosecution
for sodomy, the attorney for the state used two metaphors: "The respondents have
made a crack-in-the-door argument that if the Eleventh Circuit's decision is affirmed
in this case it will go beyond consensual private homosexual sodomy. But it is
submitted that this crack-in-the-door argument is truly a Pandora's box, for I
believe that if the Eleventh Circuit's decision is affirmed that this Court will
quite soon be confronted with questions concerning the legitimacy of statutes
which prohibit polygamy; homosexual same-sex marriage; consensual incest; prostitution;
fornication; adultery; and possibly even personal possession in private of illegal
drugs." May It Please the Court, at 365.