Tobia on Dueling Dictionaries and Clashing Corpora @kevin_tobia

Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University Law Center; Georgetown University Department of Philosophy, has published Dueling Dictionaries and Clashing Corpora. Here is the abstract.

Judges increasingly look to corpus linguistic tools in legal interpretation, as scholars advance corpus linguistics arguments about statutory and constitutional language. Corpus linguistics is sometimes offered as a preferred interpretive tool, avoiding the pitfalls of dueling canons or cherry-picked dictionary definitions. However, this short essay proposes, legal corpus linguistic tools are unlikely to resolve most difficult debates about the ordinary or public meaning of law. The essay articulates ten emerging “arguments” and “counterarguments” of legal corpus linguistics. Of course, the existence of “clashing corpora” does not imply legal corpus linguistics will be abandoned. It’s been decades since the observation of “dueling canons” and “dueling dictionaries.” Courts today regularly look to both tools.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.