The district court declined to give the proposed instruction because the meaning of deference would not be “clear to a lay person.” But “deference” is not Urdu or Klingon; it is a common English word.

Norwood v. Vance, 572 F.3d 626, 630 (9th Cir. 2009).

* * *

[T]he trial judge quite rightly concluded that to give [the] instruction [would have been confusing and] not appropriate.… I must, however, acknowledge that the majority is quite correct in intuiting that, unsurprisingly, there is no Klingon word for “deference.” See generally Marc Okrand, The Klingon Dictionary (Star Trek 1992).

Norwood, 572 F.3d at 637 n.4 (Thomas, J. dissenting).

This is part of a post that appeared at The Legal Geeks in which the author discusses a number of judicial opinions that mention “Star Trek.” The listed opinions include at least two cites to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and one mention of the “infamous Romulan cloaking device.” There have to be more Star Trek cites out there, but these are some pretty good ones.