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LAWNLINGUISTICS
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation inCOURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation inORDINARY MEANING
This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text in dispute. This time around, I’ll be discussing her claim CANONS OF INTERPRETATION A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers THE SCALIA/GARNER CANONS: DEPARTURES FROM ESTABLISHED LAW Previously:Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan GarnerThe precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts. As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adaptedfrom what is
SCALIA AND GARNER ON STATUTORY INTERPRETATION A new book on statutory interpretation has just been published; it’s titled Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts and it’s by Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia and usage guru Bryan Garner, who previously co-authored Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. Scalia’s involvement in this new project isn’t surprising; he’s the leading proponent SHERLEY V. SEBELIUS: WHAT DOES “RESEARCH” MEAN This is the second installment of my look at the recent court of appeals decision in Sherley v.Sebelius, the litigation over federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).The first installment, which sets the stage, is here.And before I begin, let me repeat that I represent the Genetics Policy Institute as an amicus curiae in support of the government in the case, and that THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts inLAWNLINGUISTICS
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation inCOURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation inORDINARY MEANING
This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text in dispute. This time around, I’ll be discussing her claim CANONS OF INTERPRETATION A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers THE SCALIA/GARNER CANONS: DEPARTURES FROM ESTABLISHED LAW Previously:Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan GarnerThe precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts. As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adaptedfrom what is
SCALIA AND GARNER ON STATUTORY INTERPRETATION A new book on statutory interpretation has just been published; it’s titled Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts and it’s by Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia and usage guru Bryan Garner, who previously co-authored Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. Scalia’s involvement in this new project isn’t surprising; he’s the leading proponent SHERLEY V. SEBELIUS: WHAT DOES “RESEARCH” MEAN This is the second installment of my look at the recent court of appeals decision in Sherley v.Sebelius, the litigation over federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).The first installment, which sets the stage, is here.And before I begin, let me repeat that I represent the Genetics Policy Institute as an amicus curiae in support of the government in the case, and that THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
BRIEFS | LAWNLINGUISTICS Briefs. I’ve written a number of briefs that have drawn on ideas and methods from linguistics. The links below will take you to those briefs, or (if you’d prefer) to a short writeup about the case, which will also include links to the brief and other information. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. City of New York (U.S. SupremeCourt)
COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of WORDS, MEANINGS, CORPORA: A LAWYER’S INTRODUCTION TO Although there’s a link on the webpage for the papers that will be presented, they are password-protected. However, my paper is posted on SSRN and can be downloaded there. It is titled Words, Meanings, Corpora: A Lawyer’s Introduction to Meaning in the Framework of Corpus Linguistics, and the abstract is below the fold.. Abstract. Corpus linguistics has been promoted as a new tool for COMPREHENSION, ORDINARY MEANING, AND LINGUISTICS Comprehension, ordinary meaning, and linguistics. In my first language-of-the-law post the other day, I talked about the fact that the words interpret and interpretation are polysemous—they can be used in multiple different ways that are related to one another: they can be used to refer both to the conscious process of deliberationthat
MEANING IN THE FRAMEWORK OF CORPUS LINGUISTICS Meaning in the framework of corpus linguistics. At the end of my previous post discussing Carissa Hessick’s paper “Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law,” I said that I would follow up with another post “making the affirmative case for the relevance of frequency data in determining ordinary meaning.”. This is that post. LAST ANTECEDENTS, SERIES QUALIFIERS, AND PSYCHOLINGUISTICS In my post Three syntactic canons, I discussed the three canons of interpretation in Scalia and Garner’s Reading Law that deal with syntactic ambiguities: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers to the nearest reasonable antecedent. Series-Qualifier Canon. When there is a straightforward, parallel construction that involves all nouns or THE SEMANTICS OF SLEEPING IN RAILWAY STATIONS The semantics of sleeping in railway stations. “I really, really like the work in Congress, I really do, but I love my family more. People may try to make it more than that, but it’s really that simple,” Chaffetz said on MSNBC. “I just turned 50. I’m sleeping on a cot in my office.”. THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts inCOURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refersNEAL GOLDFARB
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
CORPUS LINGUISTICS: EMPIRICISM AND FREQUENCY Corpus linguistics: Empiricism and frequency. This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of “THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAW” IS NOT ACTUALLY A LANGUAGE THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to SHERLEY V. SEBELIUS: WHAT DOES “RESEARCH” MEAN This is the second installment of my look at the recent court of appeals decision in Sherley v.Sebelius, the litigation over federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).The first installment, which sets the stage, is here.And before I begin, let me repeat that I represent the Genetics Policy Institute as an amicus curiae in support of the government in the case, and that THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts inCOURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refersNEAL GOLDFARB
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
CORPUS LINGUISTICS: EMPIRICISM AND FREQUENCY Corpus linguistics: Empiricism and frequency. This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of “THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAW” IS NOT ACTUALLY A LANGUAGE THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to SHERLEY V. SEBELIUS: WHAT DOES “RESEARCH” MEAN This is the second installment of my look at the recent court of appeals decision in Sherley v.Sebelius, the litigation over federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).The first installment, which sets the stage, is here.And before I begin, let me repeat that I represent the Genetics Policy Institute as an amicus curiae in support of the government in the case, and that THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
BRIEFS | LAWNLINGUISTICS Briefs. I’ve written a number of briefs that have drawn on ideas and methods from linguistics. The links below will take you to those briefs, or (if you’d prefer) to a short writeup about the case, which will also include links to the brief and other information. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. City of New York (U.S. SupremeCourt)
CANONS OF INTERPRETATION A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of “A TECHNICAL LANGUAGE” McGinnis and Rappaport make two basic points. First, they say that I did not address their argument that The Language of the Law is a technical language and that as a result there is a gap in my analysis. Second, they dispute my argument that the rules of legal interpretation are not analogous to the cognitive processes that underlie comprehension.UNDERSPECIFICATION
Posts about Underspecification written by Neal Goldfarb. The D.C. Circuit’s recent decision regarding the Recess Appointments Clause (Noel Canning v.National Labor Relations Board) bills itself as an exercise in Heller-style textualism: “When interpreting a constitutional provision, we must look at the natural meaning of the text as it would have been understood at the time of the “THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAW” IS NOT ACTUALLY A LANGUAGE THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to THE BYU LAW CORPORA (UPDATED) The BYU corpora served as my entry-point into corpus linguistics, and they have provided the corpus data that has been used in most of the law-and-corpus-linguistics work that has been done to date. And beyond that, the BYU Law School has played an enormous role, in a variety of ways, in Law and Corpus Linguistics becoming a thing. COMMENTS ON TWO RESPONSES TO MY (MOSTLY CORPUS-BASED If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that I’ve done a linguistic analysis of the main clause of the Second Amendment (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”). I argued that in light of corpus data from the founding era, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
COURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
ORDINARY MEANING
This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text in dispute. This time around, I’ll be discussing her claim SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
NEAL GOLDFARB
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in RULE OF THE LAST ANTECEDENT Previously: Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan Garner The precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons. In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts.As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adapted from what is generally known as the Rule of the Last CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
COURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
ORDINARY MEANING
This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text in dispute. This time around, I’ll be discussing her claim SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
NEAL GOLDFARB
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in RULE OF THE LAST ANTECEDENT Previously: Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan Garner The precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons. In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts.As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adapted from what is generally known as the Rule of the Last CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
BRIEFS | LAWNLINGUISTICS Briefs. I’ve written a number of briefs that have drawn on ideas and methods from linguistics. The links below will take you to those briefs, or (if you’d prefer) to a short writeup about the case, which will also include links to the brief and other information. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. City of New York (U.S. SupremeCourt)
LEGAL LANGUAGE, NATURE OF THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION The post is about a legal-ethics complaint that I’ve filed with the District of Columbia Bar against three lawyers in the Office of White House Counsel, including White House Counsel Don McGahn. The complaint relates to the episode in March when, two days after the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearing with Jim Comey and Admiral THE SCALIA/GARNER CANONS: DEPARTURES FROM ESTABLISHED LAW Previously:Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan GarnerThe precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts. As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adaptedfrom what is
CORPUS LINGUISTICS: EMPIRICISM AND FREQUENCY Corpus linguistics: Empiricism and frequency. This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to LAST ANTECEDENTS, SERIES QUALIFIERS, AND PSYCHOLINGUISTICS In my post Three syntactic canons, I discussed the three canons of interpretation in Scalia and Garner’s Reading Law that deal with syntactic ambiguities: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers to the nearest reasonable antecedent. Series-Qualifier Canon. When there is a straightforward, parallel construction that involves all nouns or “THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAW” IS NOT ACTUALLY A LANGUAGE THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to SHERLEY V. SEBELIUS: WHAT DOES “RESEARCH” MEAN This is the second installment of my look at the recent court of appeals decision in Sherley v.Sebelius, the litigation over federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).The first installment, which sets the stage, is here.And before I begin, let me repeat that I represent the Genetics Policy Institute as an amicus curiae in support of the government in the case, and that ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
COURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
ORDINARY MEANING
This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text in dispute. This time around, I’ll be discussing her claim SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
NEAL GOLDFARB
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in RULE OF THE LAST ANTECEDENT Previously: Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan Garner The precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons. In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts.As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adapted from what is generally known as the Rule of the Last CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
COURTROOM DISCOURSE
One of the areas where law and linguistics intersect is in the study of the linguistic interaction of participants in court proceedings—an area known as “courtroom discourse.”. Publications in this field tend to have titles like Discourse Dynamics in the Courtroom, Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Powerand Control, and
ORDINARY MEANING
This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text in dispute. This time around, I’ll be discussing her claim SERIES-QUALIFIER CANON A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in THREE SYNTACTIC CANONS Included in Reading Law’s list of 57 canons of interpretation are seven that are described as “syntactic canons.” Of these, three are the most important: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL The other is the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. If you’re dubious about my statement regarding the complexity of English grammar, you should note that both of these books are enormous: the text of Huddleston & Pullum exceeds 1,700 pages, andQuirk et
NEAL GOLDFARB
A few weeks ago on Language Log, Mark Liberman’s post “Lawyers as linguists” alerted me to Facebook v. Duguid, a case now pending before the Supreme Court, which grabbed my attention for several reasons.First, the case presents an interesting linguistic issue. Second, the parties on both sides have framed their linguistic arguments in terms of three of the canons of interpretation in RULE OF THE LAST ANTECEDENT Previously: Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan Garner The precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons. In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts.As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adapted from what is generally known as the Rule of the Last CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT Corpora and the Second Amendment. I’ve completed my analysis of the Second Amendment, and all but two posts have been compiled (with some revision) into a single document that can be downloaded here. This page is a guide to the series of posts here and on Language Log in which I am examining the Supreme Court’s decision in District of THE SUPREME COURT’S MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD “BECAUSE The word because will probably be used billions of times every day, and in untold millions of those instances, the word will be used in ways providing further evidence that the Supreme Court got it wrong. Given those circumstances, it is odd to think that courts in ABOUT | LAWNLINGUISTICS A number of years ago, I read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct and decided I wanted to major in linguistics. Unfortunately, I'd already finished college by then (majoring in American Studies, the last refuge of the indecisive). In fact, I'd gone to law schooland was a
BRIEFS | LAWNLINGUISTICS I've written a number of briefs that have drawn on ideas and methods from linguistics. The links below will take you to those briefs, or (if you'd prefer) to a short writeup about the case, which will also include links to the brief and other information. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. City LEGAL LANGUAGE, NATURE OF THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to TRUMP ADMINISTRATION From Richard Grunberger, The 12-year Reich: A Social History Of Nazi Germany 1933-1945 (1971; Da Capo reprint 1995): Techniques for promoting Nazi newspapers are best illustrated by Julius Streicher’s own local daily, the Fränkische Tageszeitung, which sent this circular to all readers reluctant to renew their subscriptions:. Your intention expresses a very peculiar attitude towards our COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (QUIRK ET AL Posts about Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al.) written by Neal Goldfarb THE SCALIA/GARNER CANONS: DEPARTURES FROM ESTABLISHED LAW Previously:Robocalls, legal interpretation, and Bryan GarnerThe precursors of the Scalia/Garner canons In my last post, I talked about the precursors of the canons from Reading Law that are the primary subject of this series of posts. As I explained there, the Last Antecedent Canon and the Nearest Reasonable Referent Canon are adaptedfrom what is
CORPUS LINGUISTICS: EMPIRICISM AND FREQUENCY This is the second in a series of posts about the essentially final version of Carissa Hessick’s article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law. The first post dealt mainly with Hessick’s views about how corpus linguistics relates to ultimate purpose of legal interpretation, which is to determine the legal meaning of the text indispute.
LAST ANTECEDENTS, SERIES QUALIFIERS, AND PSYCHOLINGUISTICS In my post Three syntactic canons, I discussed the three canons of interpretation in Scalia and Garner’s Reading Law that deal with syntactic ambiguities: Last-Antecedent Canon. A pronoun, relative pronoun, or demonstrative adjective generally refers to the nearest reasonable antecedent. Series-Qualifier Canon. When there is a straightforward, parallel construction that involves all nouns or “THE LANGUAGE OF THE LAW” IS NOT ACTUALLY A LANGUAGE THE NATURE OF LEGAL LANGUAGE has been a recurring subject of discussion, within applied linguistics and (U.S.) legal academia. The latest contribution to that discussion is a recently-posted draft paper by John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport, titled The Constitution and the Language of the Law. (h/t Legal Theory Blog). McGinnis and Rappaport are the primary advocates of an approach to SHERLEY V. SEBELIUS: WHAT DOES “RESEARCH” MEAN This is the second installment of my look at the recent court of appeals decision in Sherley v.Sebelius, the litigation over federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).The first installment, which sets the stage, is here.And before I begin, let me repeat that I represent the Genetics Policy Institute as an amicus curiae in support of the government in the case, and thatLAWNLINGUISTICS
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT (PART 2) Posted on August 23, 2019| Leave a comment
An introduction and guide to my series of posts “Corpora and the Second Amendment” is available here. The
corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here _. _That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. _Important: _Use the “Download” button at the top right of the screen. COFEA and COEME: lawcorpus.byu.edu . This post will complete my analysis of the Second Amendment—for now. So far, I’ve focused almost entirely on the Second Amendment’s specification of the right that it protected—_the right of the people, to keep and bear Arms_—and have said little or nothing about _well regulated_ or _militia_. That doesn’t mean I have nothing to say about those expressions, it just means that I’ll defer that discussion until sometime in the future. Meanwhile, here in the present, this post will try to answer the question that I raised in the last post: whether the Supreme Court was right in saying that the fact that _bear arms_ appears in the phrase _keep and bear arms_ means that _bear arms_ couldn’t have been used in its idiomatic military sense:> the phrase
> “keep and bear arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” > would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the > object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of > an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the > bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque. It’s true that interpreting _bear _arms as having been used idiomatically would mean that _arms_ conveys two different meanings (a phenomenon known as copredication). But as explained in my last post, that doesn’t rule out such an interpretation. Now, in this post, I’ll argue that interpreting _bear arms _in that way is more than just a theoretical possibility. I’ll discuss evidence that makes it reasonable to think _keep and bear arms_ was intended to convey such a meaning, and that such an interpretation would have been more likely than the alternative. Continue reading →Leave a comment
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” (PART1) (UPDATED)
Posted on July 29, 2019| Leave a comment
An introduction and guide to my series of posts “Corpora and the Second Amendment” is available here. The
corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here _. _That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. _Important: _Use the “Download” button at the top right of the screen. COFEA and COEME: lawcorpus.byu.edu . This was supposed to be the final entry in my series of posts on the Second Amendment, but I’ve decided to split the discussion into twoparts.
In my last post, I concluded that as used in the Second Amendment, _bear arms _was most likely understood to mean ‘serve in the militia.’ The question that I’ll address here and in my next post is whether that conclusion is changed by the fact that the Second Amendment protects not simply “the right of the people to bear arms” but “the right of the people to KEEP AND bear arms.” The corpus data on _keep and bear arms_ is of no help in answering that question, because all the uses of the phrase in the data are either from the Second Amendment or from drafts of proposals for what became the Second Amendment. Therefore, I won’t deal with the corpus data at all in this post, and I’ll deal with only a relative handful of concordance lines in the next one (though those lines will play an important role in the analysis). Taken together, these two posts will provide an extended rebuttal of the portion of _Heller_ (consisting of only four sentences) that raised the question that these posts will address. Those four sentences were part of the court’s argument that _bear arms_ as used in the Second Amendment couldn’t possibly have been understood in its idiomatic military sense:> the phrase
> “keep and bear arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” > would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the > object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of > an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the > bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque. When I first read _Heller_, this struck me as a pretty strong argument. But I’ve rethought the issue since then, and have come to think that the argument is seriously flawed. At this point, although I don’t dismiss the argument altogether, I don’t think it rules out interpreting _bear arms_ in the Second Amendment to mean ‘serve inthe militia.’
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “THE RIGHT (OF THE PEOPLE) TO …BEAR ARMS”
Posted on July 16, 2019| Leave a comment
An introduction and guide to this series of posts is available here. The
corpus data can be downloaded here _. Important: _Use the “Download” button at the top right of thescreen.
New URL for COFEA and COEME: https://lawcorpus.byu.edu. Having dealt in my last post with how _bear arms _was ORDINARILY used and understood in 18th-century America, I’ll turn in this post to the question of how it was used IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT. I’ll begin by considering how _the right to bear arms_ would most likely have been understood during the Founding Era. As I will explain, I think it would have been understood to mean something along the lines of ‘serve in the militia.’ I’ll then ask whether that conclusion is changed by the fact that the right to bear arms is described in the Second Amendment as belonging to “the people.” My answer will be that my conclusion is unchanged. My next post will wrap up my examination of the Second Amendment by considering whether my interpretation is ruled out by the fact that the Second Amendment deals not simply with the right of the people to bear arms but with their right to KEEP and bear arms. And again, theanswer will be no.
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “BEAR ARMS” (PART 3) Posted on July 10, 2019| Leave a comment
An introduction and
guide to this series of posts is available here. The
corpus data can be downloaded here _. Important: _Use the “Download” button at the top right of thescreen.
New URL for COFEA and COEME: https://lawcorpus.byu.edu.
From _The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut From October, 1735, to October, 1743, Inclusive_—♦—
THIS WILL BE my final post about _bear arms_, and it will be followed by a post on the _right of the people to … bear arms_ and another on _keep and bear arms_. These posts will directly address the linguistic issues that are most important in evaluating the Supreme Court’s decision in _District of Columbia v. Heller_: how _bear arms_ was ordinarily used in the America of the late 18th century, and how _the right of the people, to keep and bear Arms _was likely to have beenunderstood.
As I’ve previously explained, the court held in _Heller_ that at the time of the Framing, _bear arms_ ordinarily meant ‘wear, bear, or carry … upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.’ In my last post , I discussed the uses of _bear arms _in the corpus that I thought were at least arguably consistent with that that meaning. Out of the 531 uses that I identified as being relevant, there were only 26 in that category—less than 5% of the total. In this post I’ll discuss the other 95%. Continue reading →Leave a comment
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “BEAR ARMS” (PART 2) Posted on April 30, 2019| Leave a comment
Part 1 is here .
An introduction and guide to my series of posts “Corpora and the Second Amendment” is available here. The
corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here _. _That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. _Important: _Use the “Download” button at the top right of the screen. _Update_: Concordance-line references have been changed to reflect revisions to the spreadsheet from which the lines were copied, as have figures for the total number of concordance lines and for the various subtotals that are given. New URL for COFEA and COEME: https://lawcorpus.byu.edu. In this post and the next one, I will discuss the corpus data for_bear arms_.
This post will focus on the data that I think is consistent (or at least arguably consistent) with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of _bear arms_ in _District of Columbia v. Heller_, and the next
one will deal with the data that I think is inconsistent with the _Heller_ interpretation. As I discussed in my last post, the court in _Heller_ held that the “natural meaning” of _bear arms_ in the late 18th century (i.e., its “ordinary meaning” (i.e., what it ordinarily meant)) was “wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.” As I read the data, very little of it is consistent with thatinterpretation.
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “BEAR ARMS” (PART 1), PLUS A LOOK AT “THE PEOPLE” Posted on April 29, 2019| 1 comment
An introduction and guide to my series of posts “Corpora and the Second Amendment” is available here. The
corpus data that is discussed can be downloaded here _. _That link will take you to a shared folder in Dropbox. _Important: _Use the “Download” button at the top right of the screen. New URL for COFEA and COEME: https://lawcorpus.byu.edu.
This is the first of what will be three posts on _bear arms_; it will be devoted to critiquing the Supreme Court’s discussion of _bear arms_ in _District of Columbia v. Heller_. My
examination of the corpus data on _bear arms_ will appear in my next two posts. In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can read discussions of the data by Dennis Baron (“Corpus Evidence Illuminates the Meaning of _Bear Arms_,”
in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly) and by Josh Blackman & James C. Phillips (“Corpus Linguistics and the Second Amendment,”
in the Harvard Law Review Blog), both of which reach conclusions consistent with mine. (The piece by Blackman & Phillips is especially noteworthy, given that they are both gun-rights advocates.) My focus in this post will be on the Supreme Court’s conclusion that at the time the Second Amendment was proposed and ratified, _bear arms _unambiguously meant ‘carry weapons, for purposes of being prepared for a confrontation,’ without regard to whether the carrying was in connection with military service. What I conclude is that even without taking account of how _bear arms_ was actually used, the court’s arguments don’t hold up. Assuming for the sake of argument that _bear arms_ could reasonably have been understood to mean what the court said it meant, the court didn’t show that it _unambiguously_meant that.
That’s not to say that I think _bear arms_ was ambiguous. As I’ll discuss in the next two posts, the corpus evidence points toward the conclusion that _bear arms_ unambiguously conveyed the military meaning that the Supreme Court rejected: “to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight” or “to wage war.” But even if the evidence were equivocal, the absence of evidence unambiguously supporting the court’s interpretation would still be important. That’s because the court’s analysis in _Heller _depends crucially on its conclusion that _bear arms_ was unambiguous. It was that conclusion that enabled the court to interpret the Second Amendment’s operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) without taking into consideration its prefatory clause (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”). In the court’s view, if the operative clause was unambiguous, the prefatory clause “does not limit or expand scope.” So if court was wrong in thinking that the operative clause was unambiguous, it was wrong in refusing to consider whether the prefatory clause affected its meaning. And if the prefatory clause plays a role in interpreting the operative clause, the argument against the court’s interpretation is strengthened. Continue reading →1 Comment
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CORPORA AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: CHANGING MY MIND ABOUT A CHANGEOF MIND
Posted on February 26, 2019| Leave a comment
After initially declaring that I wouldn’t be posting about the phrase _keep arms_ because I had nothing interesting to say about it, and then declaring that upon further reflection I did have something interesting to say, I’ve realized after drafting a post discussing the phrase that I was right the first time. So when “Corpora and the Second Amendment: ‘keep arms’” doesn’t appear, that’s why.Leave a comment
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I'm a lawyer who is interested in linguistics. I talk here about drawing on linguistics in doing law (i.e., lawyering and judging) and in thinking about law. I may also talk about law by itself and perhaps linguistics by itself. And sometimes not-law and not-linguistics.gmail.com
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RECENT POSTS
* Corpora and the Second Amendment (Part 2) * Corpora and the Second Amendment: “keep and bear arms” (Part1) (updated)
* Corpora and the Second Amendment: “the right (of the people) to… bear arms”
* Corpora and the Second Amendment: “bear arms” (part3)
* Corpora and the Second Amendment: “bear arms” (part 2) * Corpora and the Second Amendment: “bear arms” (part 1), plus a look at “the people” * Corpora and the Second Amendment: Changing my mind about a changeof mind
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