Gales, Solan, and Tobia on Nix v. Hedden: Corpus Linguistics and the Interpretation of Statutes Over Time

Tammy Gales, Hofstra University, Lawrence M. Solan, Brooklyn Law School, and Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University Law Center, have published Nix v. Hedden: Corpus Linguistics and the Interpretation of Statutes Over Time (draft) Here is the abstract.

In the study of American statutory interpretation, Nix v. Hedden (1893) exemplifies the primacy of ordinary meaning. The Court famously held that, in a tariff act, a tomato is a "vegetable," not a "fruit." However, the Court suggested that the statute was addressed to buyers and sellers of produce and that it would eschew "ordinary" meaning for a technical meaning in trade or commerce-if one existed. In this chapter, from a book on corpus linguistics and the interpretation of historical statues, we revisit Nix with corpus linguistic analysis. We compiled a specialized corpus of 19th century trade sources and find that the usage of "tomato" was decidedly mixed: a vegetable, a fruit, and sometimes both simultaneously! This new data complicates the seemingly simple holding in Nix. It also challenges the case's import. Current Supreme Court Justices invoke Nix for the principle that (1) statutes should not be interpreted "literally" (they should be interpreted contextually), by (2) giving terms their ordinary, nontechnical meanings. Our study of Nix underscores the false equivalence between contextual and ordinary interpretation. In some cases, the contextually relevant meaning is a technical one. Our study of 19th century trade meaning supports that Nix may even be one of those cases.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.