The Supreme Court's English impatience

At least three U.S. Supreme Court justices are emerging as sticklers for the English language, a practice that could one day boomerang on them.

Adam Liptak, New York Times correspondent at the court, reported on June 14 2011 how justices are incorporating dictionary definitions into their legal opinions. This past May, Liptak reported, the justices cited dictionaries in eight cases to figure out what lawmakers meant in using such words as “prevent,” “delay” and “report.” He added that in the decade starting in October 2000, the justices used dictionaries to define 295 words or phrases in 225 opinions, as chronicled in a Marquette Law Review study.

Maybe the court adds injury to insult each time it overturns an inferior court’s ruling. Inferior? No typo, or rather, no error of ink. Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution reads: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold…”

The 19th Amendment can be read a few different ways: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

As in a sporting event, does this mean a citizen’s right to vote cannot be called “on account of…?” How does Congress enforce this amendment? Perhaps the 19th Amendment can stand amending with one word: Substitute “gender” for “sex.”

Liptak focused on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Clarence Thomas as dictionary aficionados. Breyer is recognized as a member of the court’s liberal bloc while Roberts and Thomas are considered conservatives.

Jessie Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, told Liptak, “Dictionary definitions are written with a lot of things in mind, but rigorously circumscribing the exact meanings and connotations of terms is not usually one of them.”

Liptak reported that in 2006 J. Gordon Christy, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, wrote in The Mississippi Law Journal, “We are treated to the truly absurd spectacle of august justices and judges arguing over which unreliable dictionary and which unreliable dictionary definition should be deemed authoritative.”

Which brings us to the mother, no pun intended, of all legal and social issues that plagues the Supreme Court in perpetuity, so to speak. Opponents of abortion make a career of stretching semantics by dubbing themselves “pro-life” and insisting that “life” begins at “conception.” Wording employed by those who support the right to anabortion has never confused me.

One can find a range of definitions for “life” and “birth,” but none are synonymous with “conception.” One Merriam-Webster definition of life: “The period from birth to death.” Two M-W versions of birth: “The emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent,” and “the act or process of bringing young from the womb.”

If a same-sex marriage case reaches the Supreme Court, how will “marriage” be defined? One Web site maintains gender-neutral definitions and another limits marriage as an institution for a man and a woman. Merriam-Webster tries to have it both ways: “(1): The state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.”

Sounds like grist for a split decision.