Close Menu
    Daten

    [OC] Von den Obersten Gerichten der US-Bundesstaaten verwendete Schriftarten und Schriftgrößen (2026)

    Share.
    View 16 Comments

    16 Kommentare

    1. zummit on

      Made in R with ggplot2.

      For each state, I looked at recent opinions rehosted on justia[[1]](https://law.justia.com/) and opened them up in Libre Draw. Oklahoma does not publish pdfs of their opinions online, instead serving the text in html. Nevada only publishes scans of signed opinions, but the font looks like Century Schoolbook size 13 to me.

      Not all state supreme courts call themselves „Supreme Court“ and not all states have just one supreme court. Of note, Texas and Oklahoma each have separate courts for civil and criminal cases. Oklahoma’s civil and criminal courts will ask your browser to display Helvetica Neue and Source Sans Pro, respectively, but will show another font if those aren’t installed locally. Texas‘ civil court uses Century Schoolbook, while its criminal court of appeals uses Equity A, mirroring the nearby 5th federal circuit.

      In addition, two courts have unique choices for their font: Arkansas uses [Bembo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembo) ([example](https://law.justia.com/cases/arkansas/supreme-court/2026/cr-25-645.html)), while Maine uses [Cambria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_%28typeface%29) ([example](https://law.justia.com/cases/maine/supreme-court/2026/2026-me-54.html)). A few courts use close alternatives of prominent fonts. Arizona, Colorado and Utah use Book Antiqua, which is a doppelganger for Palatino Linotype. Oregon uses „New Century Schoolbook“, Connecticut has just „SchoolBook“ on file, and North Dakota has „QT Palatine“.

      There is also some variety among font sizes. ~~Oklahoma’s html approach uses larger font sizes, up to 16pt, which is recommended for websites these days.~~ The average size among the rest is about 13pt. Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island all use 11pt, which is still within the recommended 10+ for printed material, although you might need to zoom in a bit when viewing on a screen. All these choices tower over SCOTUS which requires 12pt for submitted briefs but only publishes their opinions in 9pt.

      edit: Thank you to /u/kirklennon for correcting me that Oklahoma uses 12pt and 10.5pt, smaller than the image indicates.

    4. BeginningPlastic3747 on

      the fact that like 6 states are still using Times New Roman in official court opinions is sending me, some clerk is out here formatting a death penalty ruling like it’s a 9th grade book report.

    5. MadMaxIsMadAsMax on

      Massachusetts (and Hawai’i) using a monospaced font that is good for keeping spaces while coding… I guess the MTI has something to say about this.

    7. kirklennon on

      I have no idea which states are Bookman and which are Times, and why for the love of god is the key for font sizes a spectrum?

      This is interesting data but the presentation is not beautiful.

    8. Kale on

      FINALLY! One of them is using a sans serif font.

      And Couier New is Serif AND mono spaced. That’s torture. Even among mono spaced fonts in my IDE, there’s much much much better fonts out there!

    10. jaypizzl on

      How did Pennsylvania make the decision to use a sans serif font? Aside from “avoid Comic Sans and Wingdings,” using a font with serifs should be wildly obvious. That’s a real fail.

    12. dhkendall on

      First thing I’m doing when I’m governor is declaring the state Supreme Court must use Wingdings

    15. Count-Telperion on

      Heck yeah! I love seeing my homestate of Iowa uses Bookman. The best serif font.

    16. AirFit7143 on

      equity a was designed by a typographer who also went to law school, specifically for legal documents. the states using it are the only ones on this map that picked a font built for the job

    Leave A Reply