Category Archives: Interpretation
Brian Slocum, ‘The Contribution of Linguistics to Legal Interpretation’
ABSTRACT Is the expertise of linguists relevant to the interpretation of legal texts? If so, can this expertise contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of legal interpretation than currently exists? This chapter addresses the value of linguists’ expertise to legal interpretation by examining the determinants of meaning of legal texts. On one view, the meaning […]
Karen Sneddon, ‘Dead Men (and Women) Should Tell Tales: Narrative, Intent, and the Construction of Wills’
ABSTRACT Intent is a foundational principle that is referenced in many varied aspects of succession. This article will focus on the role of intent in will construction proceedings where intent is referred to as the ‘touchstone’ and ‘pole star’. When an issue arises as to the meaning of a provision in a will admitted to […]
Joseph Diedrich, ‘Bostock v Lexmark: Is the Zone-of-Interests Test a Canon of Donut Holes?’
ABSTRACT The US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bostock v Clayton County, Ga has understandably received considerable popular and scholarly attention, both for its substantive holding and for its opinions’ dueling approaches to statutory interpretation. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch rejected allowing extratextual considerations – such as assumptions about statutory purpose and expectations […]
Jordan Perkins, ‘Authorial Intention, Purposive Interpretation, and the Incoherence of Strong Textualism’
ABSTRACT This essay is intended to shed some light on the question of how we should interpret legal texts – particularly statutes, although my remarks here should have some implications for other statute-like enactments, such as administrative regulations and statute-like provisions in written constitutions. My starting point will be a discussion of textualism in Antonin […]
Kevin Tobia, ‘The Corpus and the Courts’
ABSTRACT The legal corpus linguistics movement is one of the most exciting recent developments in legal theory. Justice Thomas R Lee and Stephen C Mouritsen are its pioneers, and their new article thoughtfully responds to critics. Here, Part I applauds their response as a cautious account of how those methods might provide relevant evidence about […]
Timothy Endicott, ‘Authentic Interpretation’
ABSTRACT I approach the identification of the principles of legal interpretation through a discussion of an important but largely forgotten strand in our legal heritage: the idea (and at some points in English law, the rule) that the interpretation of legislation is to be done by the law maker. The idea that authentic interpretation is […]
Elias Leake Quinn, ‘W(h)ither Judgment’
ABSTRACT Meaning is messy. Since our notions of justice often demand clarity from the law, some jurists have set themselves to the task of cleaning it up. Textualists home in on the written word as the key to unlocking clarity. But the textualist’s endeavor is less the crusade of a purist than it is the […]
Frederick Schauer, ‘The Occasions of Law (and the Occasions of Interpretation)’
ABSTRACT When John Searle observed that there is ‘no remark without remarkableness’, he made a point about the pragmatics of that is importantly applicable to legal interpretation. Just as the act of remarking, according to Searle, presupposes some reason for the remark, so too does an act of legal interpretation presuppose a reason to interpret. […]
McGinni and Rappaport, ‘The Power of Interpretation: Minimizing the Construction Zone’
ABSTRACT One of the most important conceptual innovations within modern originalism is the distinction between a zone of interpretation and a zone of construction. When constitutional provisions have a determinate meaning, decisions finding that meaning occur within the interpretation zone. But when the original meaning of a constitutional provision is indeterminate, decisions are based on […]
Anita Krishnakumar, ‘MetaRules for Ordinary Meaning’
‘Ordinary meaning’ is a notoriously undefined concept in statutory interpretation theory. Courts and scholars sometimes describe ordinary meaning as the meaning that a ‘reasonable reader’ would ascribe to the statutory language at issue, but it remains unclear how judges and lawyers should go about identifying such meaning. Over the past few decades, as textualism has […]