August 2017 Bar Bulletin
By Joseph E. Bringman
In its June 26 order concerning the Trump Administration’s “travel ban” from certain predominantly Muslim countries, the U.S. Supreme Court focused on whether persons seeking to enter the United States from those countries have a “bona fide relationship” to this country. Naturally, a key question arising from this order is “what does bona fide mean?” Another question could well be “how are bona fide and other Latin words and phrases pronounced?”
Let’s start with bona fide itself. Bona sounds the same in English and Latin, but not so fide. Lawyers often use an Anglicized pronunciation of Latin words, the tendency here being...