“If it looks like feces, if it smells like feces, if it has the color and texture of feces, then it must be feces.”
Iowa Court of Appeals (pdf), ruling that expert testimony is not required to determine whether shit is, in fact, shit.
Don't miss footnote 1, on page 7, which offers a nice rundown on the many uses of the word in case law, including the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 which upheld the FCC's indecency standards regarding profanity as applied against a daytime broadcast of George Carlin's infamous "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine.
For what it's worth, I grew up in Iowa, and I can tell you that if you spend any time at all driving the highways and byways of the country's number one pork producing state, you get to know exactly what shit smells like.
In the words of a friend's dad: "it smells like money."
(via the WSJ Law Blog)