The phrase "Homer nodded" appears four times in the U.S. Reports. The first time was in Justice Douglas' concurrence in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) (quoting Judge Learned Hand as it happens).
The phrase would not appear in another Supreme Court decision until 1992's Lee v. Weisman, when Justice Souter included it in a footnote. Yet as Mark Tushnet recounts on Balkinization, while the phrase had been included in the original slip opinion, it was omitted by the Reporter's office--apparently because no one there recognized the phrase and they thought it was an error. As a consequence, it did not appear in the official bound volume for several years. Indeed, it was only after Tushnet contacted Souter about the omission that Souter realized what had occurred, and the language was restored by a subsequent erratum.
Tushnet writes:
