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Corpus Linguistics as a Method of Legal Interpretation: Some Progress, Some Questions

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International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Corpus linguistics is becoming a respected method of statutory and constitutional interpretation in the United States over the past decade, yet it has also generated a backlash from a group of scholars that engage in empirical work. This essay attempts to demonstrate both the contributions and the risks of using linguistic corpora as a primary tool in legal interpretation. Its legitimacy stems from the fact that courts routinely state that statutory terms, when not defined as a matter of law, are to be given their ordinary meaning. Judges have responded to this challenge, with the assistance of the linguistics community, by using corpora to determine which meanings are ordinary. However, legal analysts have not determined exactly what makes one meaning ordinary and another not ordinary. This gap has led to a level of disagreement in the field. Moreover, while linguists who engage in corpus linguistic analysis typically emphasize the importance of context, the legal application is peculiarly context-free, in keeping with legal philosophies that eschew reliance on reference to a law’s purpose and the intent of the legislature that enacted it. This move adds a political dimension to corpus analysis as a means of legal interpretation. Yet, the article concludes that by relying on a blend of general and specialized corpora, the legal system can substantially reduce the problem of contextualization, as some linguists and practitioners have already recognized.

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Notes

  1. Corpus of Founding Era American English (COFEA). Website: https://lcl.byu.edu/projects/cofea/. Accessed 19 April 2020.

  2. Id. This is not the case for other corpora, including COCA and COHA, which do not contain legal documents, except, perhaps, incidentally, as discussed below.

  3. 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1).

  4. James Heilpern [18] offers an analysis to the effect that a corpus linguistic analysis of the data, obviously not available at the time the case was decided, could have been helpful in determining this issue.

  5. Compare, e.g., Chomsky [7] (supporting the use of legislative history in that case) and Vermeule [42] (opposing it).

  6. U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 1. The Thirteenth Amendment says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”.

  7. 41 Stat. 324 (1919). The law is currently codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2311–12.

  8. 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (2006).

  9. Hoopes, Neal, Paxton M. Lewis, and Amanda Black. 2020. Patent Claim Construction and Corpus Linguistics. Paper presented at Brigham Young University Conference on Legal Corpus Linguistics, February 2020 (copy of draft on file with author). It should be noted that Black is a linguist, Hoopes and Lewis, lawyers, adding to the list of interdisciplinary collaborators.

  10. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C).

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Acknowledgements

The author expresses his gratitude to Allison Moore, Ben Bogard and Isabel Agosto for their invaluable work as research assistants. The author further wishes to thank James Macleod, Ed Finegan, Kevin Tang, Maggie Lemos, and participants in the Yale workshop on Legislation in February 2020 for very helpful comments and suggestions.

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  1. Don Forchelli Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon St, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, USA

    Lawrence M. Solan

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Solan, L.M. Corpus Linguistics as a Method of Legal Interpretation: Some Progress, Some Questions. Int J Semiot Law 33, 283–298 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09707-8

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