More on The Language of the Law
Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Will Baude has commented on my post about the language of the law. Will and his co-author Steve Sachs recently had a paper titled “The Law of Interpretation” published as a...
View ArticleReplying to McGinnis and Rappaport
As I’ve noted, John McGinnis and Mike Rappaport have responded to my post “The language of the law” is not actually a language. They disagree with what I said, and in this post I will return the favor....
View ArticleThe 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....
View ArticleSome comments on Hessick on corpus linguistics (updated)
UP UNTIL NOW, the use of corpus linguistics in legal interpretation has gotten almost entirely good press—probably because almost all the press it’s gotten has come from its advocates. That situation...
View ArticleMeaning 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...
View ArticleMore on the relevance of frequency data: Responding to Steinberg
In a comment on one of Carissa Hessick’s posts about corpus linguistics at Prawfsblawg, Asher Steinberg expressed the view that relying on frequency data in deciding issues of ordinary meaning is...
View ArticleResponding further to Hessick on corpus linguistics (The first in a series)
Carissa Hessick has recently posted a near-final version of her forthcoming article Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law, which will appear in a special issue of the B.Y.U. Law Review devoted to...
View ArticleCorpus 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...
View Article“Empirical” doesn’t necessarily mean “definitively verifiable”
Carissa Hessick and I have been debating the appropriateness of using empirical methods in legal interpretation. The debate began on PrawfsBlawg, then moved over here (with some continued discussion at...
View ArticleCorpus linguistics and empiricism: A Twitter exchange
My last post, Corpus linguistics: Empiricism and frequency, prompted a Twitter exchange between Carissa Hessick and me, a lightly edited version of which I present here. Hessick: One question based on...
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