Legal Meaning Is

A lawyer is someone who studies law. A lawful search and seizure occurs when the police show up at your home with an arrest warrant. A legal apartment is an apartment that complies with building codes and is located in an appropriate zoned area. The opposite of legal is illegal, which means breaking the law. As mentioned above, I`m not surprised by these findings, partly because my own empirical research agrees with them. For example, in a recent study on the extent of the legal duel over interpretive resources at the U.S. Supreme Court, I measured the frequency with which majority and dissenting opinions in the same case used the same interpretive tool to obtain conflicting results.38×38 See Anita S. Krishnakumar, Dueling Canons, 65 Duke L.J. 909, 912 (2016). For the simple or ordinary meaning analysis, I found a rate of 42.7% of judicial duels – meaning that in more than 40% of cases with split court votes, where at least one opinion held that the law had an ordinary or simple meaning, an opposing opinion replied that the law had a different ordinary meaning.39×39. See id. at 929–30 and tbl.1. Perhaps even more interesting is that in 41.2% of cases where the majority and dissenting opinions disagreed on the clear meaning of a statute, one opinion advocated adopting the «essential» or «prototypical» meaning of the word in question, while the other focused on the broad or legalistic meaning of the word.40×40 See id., pp.

962–63, 962 nn.146–47. However, if Congress or the Court were to establish a meta-rule requiring that Title VII (or civil liberties or anti-discrimination laws in general) be interpreted in light of its legalistic (or prototypical) meaning, then all the language in the workplace discrimination provision of Title VII should be interpreted with the same ordinary meaning. that is, prototypical or legalistic. We don`t have to look far to see the practical implications of this kind of metarule: a way to understand the opposing views of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in Bostock v. Clayton County.54×54 140 pp. C. 1731 (2020). The case deals precisely with this type of legalistic analysis in relation to the prototypical analysis of the meaning of the legal formulation «on account of sex». In this case, Gorsuch J. (and a majority of the Court) concluded that the term must be given a broad or legalistic meaning to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity; while Kavanaugh J. (and two other dissenters) concluded that the sentence should be limited to its prototypical sense, which would not include such discrimination.55×55.

Compare id. in 1739, 1741-42, with id. in 1755, 1767, 1769 (Alito, J., different) and id. in 1824-28 (Kavanaugh, J., different). Alito J.A.`s dissent was supported by Thomas J. Id. about 1754 (Alito, J., different). Remarkably, Justice Gorsuch`s opinion was framed as an interpretation of «gender» in light of dictionary definitions that equate «gender» with biological distinctions – arguing that distinctions based on sexual orientation or gender identity cannot be made without considering biological differences at some level.

Id. c. 1739, 1741–42. Judge Kavanaugh`s dissenting opinion countered that this was true only in a very literal (or legalistic) sense, pointing out that no one in the general conversation would say that a homosexual person was fired because of their «gender.» See id., p. 1828 (Kavanaugh, J., different). Justice Gorsuch`s majority opinion is in many ways a classic legalistic view, with his insistence that «conversational conventions do not control the legal analysis of Title VII» and that such an analysis depends on whether «sex» was a cause of discrimination against the employer. Id., p. 1745 (majority opinion). Conversely, Justice Kavanaugh`s dissenting opinion is essentially an argument that the prototypical meaning of «sex-based» discrimination does not include discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In fact, the «literal» meaning criticized by Justice Kavanaugh is essentially the broad or legalistic meaning of a term; while «common usage», id.

to 1828 (Kavanaugh, J., different), meaning is another way of reaching the central or prototypical (most common) meaning of the term. Weeks retained an unprecedented legal team, which included bitter political rivals Hamilton and Burr. Companies are not sharing this information, in part because of concerns about the legal consequences Trek now faces. Tobias` data suggests, in my view, that in anticipation of difficult cases that tend to result in the decision, it might be useful for legislators – or the judiciary – to establish standard rules about who is the relevant «ordinary reader» for certain types of laws or even certain types of legal provisions. For example, the public or the «ordinary reader» concerned may be the judge of the provisions of a law that governs procedural or legal matters, while the public may be lay for provisions that directly govern the conduct of citizens. Whether the relevant legal group should be determined for entire laws or for certain types of legal provisions is an important sub-question that courts, legislators and academics can and should think about thoroughly.18×18. One author, David Louk, has suggested that most laws are aimed at multiple audiences and that a «central task» for legal interpreters should therefore be «to identify the primary audience» to whom the law is addressed. Id., p. 159; See also ID. 199. My purpose in this answer is simply to address the issue.

1. Congress, when enacting individual laws, could determine that a law should be interpreted broadly or legalistically in light of its prototypical meaning or, conversely, expansive or legalistic.44×44. See Abbe R. Gluck, The States as Laboratories of Statutory Interpretation: Methodological Consensus and the New Modified Textualism, 119 Yale L.J. 1750, 1824–27 (2010) (discusses the general rules of interpretation prescribed by state legislators and the possibility of Congress doing something similar). Alternatively, Congress could enact a more general law along the lines of the Dictionary Act,45×45.1 U.S.C. §§ 1-8. Certain categories of laws should be given their prototypical or broad meaning – for example, terms in criminal laws should be interpreted in light of their prototypical meaning, while terms in antitrust laws should be interpreted in light of their broad or legalistic meaning. This deviation is also important, because if judges and laymen disagree on the ordinary meaning of legal terms in borderline cases, the key question in such cases is: who is the relevant audience or the «ordinary reader» of the law – judge, average person on the street or another group of people? This is a crucial issue in the interpretation of the law, but it is often ignored.17×17.

But see David S. Louk, The Audiences of Statutes, 105 Cornell L. Rev. 137, 159 (2019) (arguing that many disagreements in law interpretation cases arise from conflicts in prioritizing competing legal audiences, and that different methods of interpretation may be appropriate for interpreting statutes for different audiences). For example, in criminal statutes or laws dealing with education, housing or the right to vote, the relevant public or the «ordinary reader» may be the average person on the street. Conversely, in the case of laws governing the apportionment of costs among litigants, jurisdiction, or other matters of litigation or recourse, the relevant public or «ordinary reader» may instead be judges.