A
pedant is a person who is excessively concerned with
formalism and precision, or who makes an ostentatious and arrogant show of learning.
I clicked on the "formalism" hyperlink and read the script that resulted. Some of the text was this:
LawEdit
Main article:
Legal formalism
Formalism is a school of thought in law and
jurisprudence which assumes that the law is a system of rules that can determine the outcome of any case, without reference to external norms. For example, formalism animates the commonly heard criticism that "judges should apply the law, not make it." To formalism's rival, legal realism, this criticism is incoherent, because legal realism assumes that, at least in difficult cases, all applications of the law will require that a judge refer to external (i.e. non-legal) sources, such as the judge's conception of justice, or commercial norms.
All I could think of when I read this was the guys that went through divorce court where the Judge says: ....and your wife gets the house, the kids, and half your salary...........
Hey Gary, what do you think?