Official dictionary of the U.S. judiciary system? Someone recently mentioned the "plain meaning" rule in one of my questions about statutory interpretation. Is there an official dictionary - like Merriam-Webster - that judges are supposed to rely on? Or do we assume that any of the leading publishers of dictionaries have essentially identical definitions?
I don't believe there is a single "standard" dictionary that judges use. Presumably any well regarded and common one will do as long as it can be cited. You can see from Justice Alito's opinion in Intel Investment Policy Comm vs Sulyma that he references several dictionaries. Although ERISA does not define the phrase “actual knowledge,” its meaning is plain. Dictionaries are hardly necessary to confirm the point, but they do. When Congress passed ERISA, the word “actual” meant what it means to-day: “existing in fact or reality.” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary 10 (1967); accord, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 13 (11th ed. 2005) (same); see also American Heritage Dictionary 14 (1973) (“In existence;real; factual”); id., at 18 (5th ed. 2011) (“Existing in reality and not potential, possible, simulated, or false”). So did the word “knowledge,” which meant and still means “the fact or condition of being aware of something.” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary 469 (1967); accord, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 691 (2005) (same); see also American Heritage Dictionary 725 (1973) (“Familiarity, awareness, or understanding gained through experience or study”); id., at 973 (2011) (same). Thus, to have “actual knowledge” of a piece of information, one must in fact be aware of it. Legal dictionaries give “actual knowledge” the same meaning: “[r]eal knowledge as distinguished from presumed knowledge or knowledge imputed to one.” Ballentine’s Law Dictionary 24 (3d ed. 1969); accord, Black’s Law Dictionary 1043 (11th ed. 2019) (defining “actual knowledge” as “[d]irect and clear knowledge, as distinguished from constructive knowledge”).
I found an example of "is illegal" in RCW 78.52.467: "If the department believes that any oil, gas, or product is illegal...". There are some examples of "shall be illegal", e.g. RCW 39.84.050 "It shall be illegal for a director, officer, agent", where "illegal" is used predicatively. I tenatively conclude than the latter kind of use is less frequent that the adjectival use. Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Pocket ed does not include "illegal" except in some "illegal"+noun constructions, but it does list "unlawful" alone. "Unlawful" has been used since 1387 (J. Trevisa translation of Ranulf Higden Polychronicon), whereas "illegal" only goes back to 1626. Legal language tends to be very conservative, so the fact that "unlawful" got there first (aided no doubt by the fact that it is an Anglo-Saxon construction, not a medieval Latin borrowing) gives the term priority in legal usage. It sounds more legal to say "(un)lawful" that "(il)legal".
The term is "citation." In the citation you entered, U.S.C. refers to the United States Code, which is a compilation of every general permanent law Congress has passed that's organized by topic (and not by when it was passed). The US Code is developed by the Office of Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives, and is organized into (at the moment) 54 titles. The 29 is the title for the code section you cited; Title 29 deals with labor. Other titles include Title 10 (dealing with the military), Title 18 (crimes and criminal procedure), and Title 26 (income tax). There are levels of organization below the title, but they vary by title (e.g. Title 29 is divided into chapters, while Title 10 has five subtitles, divided into parts, and those are divided into chapters). The level where the actual text of the law is found is the section; when you're citing something in the US Code, you cite it by title and section (§ is a standard symbol for "section"). So 29 USC § 203(b) is section 203 of Title 29, subsection B. You don't include the fact that it's in Chapter 8 in your citation, because title and section is all you need to find it.
You are correct that "narrow tailoring" and "least restrictive means" are often treated as synonyms.1 For example, Professor Volokh describes narrow tailoring as having four components: advancement of the compelling governmental interest, no over-inclusiveness, the least restrictive alternative, and no under-inclusiveness.2 However, he says that the first "three components are closely related, and all of them could be subsumed within the 'least restrictive alternative' inquiry."3 The Supreme Court has sometimes equated strict scrutiny with the "least restrictive alternative" formulation, saying, "Unquestionably we have held that a government practice or statute which restricts 'fundamental rights' or which contains 'suspect classifications' is to be subjected to 'strict scrutiny' and can be justified only if it furthers a compelling government purpose and, even then, only if no less restrictive alternative is available."4 The court has also distinguished between narrow tailoring and a "least restrictive alternative" test, at least with respect to laws that infringe on speech: "Lest any confusion on the point remain, we reaffirm today that a regulation of the time, place, or manner of protected speech must be narrowly tailored to serve the government's legitimate, content-neutral interests, but that it need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means of doing so."5. The dissent in that same case described the majority's view as a "serious distortion of the narrow tailoring requirement", and said, "Our cases have not, as the majority asserts, 'clearly' rejected a less-restrictive-alternative test. [...] The Court's past concern for the extent to which a regulation burdens speech more than would a satisfactory alternative is noticeably absent from today's decision. The majority requires only that government show that its interest cannot be served as effectively without the challenged restriction."6. Some statutes remove any ambiguity, prescribing the "least restrictive alternative" test.7. In summary, certain areas of law (free speech, religious freedoms, affirmative action) have their own idiosyncratic treatment of strict scrutiny, narrow tailoring, and the "least restrictive alternative" test. It is always best to read the particular line of case law in the field you are interested in to see exactly what formula the court has established in that area. 1. Winkler, Adam, Fatal in Theory and Strict in Fact: An Empirical Analysis of Strict Scrutiny in the Federal Courts. Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 59, p. 793, 2006; UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 06-14. At 800: "Narrow tailoring requires that the law capture within its reach no more activity (or less) than is necessary to advance those compelling ends. An alternative phrasing is that the law must be the “least restrictive alternative” available to pursue those ends." 2. Eugene Volokh, Freedom of Speech, Permissible Tailoring and Transcending Strict Scrutiny, 144 U. Pennsylvania L. Rev. 2417 (1997). 3. Ibid. 4. Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke 438 U.S. 265 (1978) (Opinion of Justice Brennan, Justice White, Justice Marshall, and Justice Blackmun, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.) 5. Ward v. Rock Against Racism 491 U.S. 781 (1989) 6. Ibid. 7. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, implemented in part in 42 U.S.C. §2000bb-1(b): "Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."
No This term appears to have originated from an anonymous user of this site. Constiption is not a recognized legal concept, nor is it an English word in any other context. All DuckDuckGo hits are either SE questions or misspellings of &quot;constipation&quot;.
First, I don’t believe the author is using quotation marks to indicate an actual quotation, it is being used for emphasis and to group the words as a concept. That concept is that while it may seem undemocratic for a judge to overturn a law enacted by a democratically elected assembly, the “higher democracy” is that it protects the democratic institutions themselves by limiting the power of the legislature to what the higher law of a constitution allows.
Why do attorneys have these? Originally to use as references, although some kinds of books (e.g. case law reporters, Shepard's citations, Martindale Hubble directories, and serial analysis of case law like Am. Jur.) are rarely used that way any more. When I started practice in the mid-1990s, it cost several hundred dollars an hour to access online legal sources (that were less comprehensive and had lower quality search functions than the service that comes free with my bar membership today), so the vast majority of legal research was done with hard copy case reporters, digests and annotated statute books. A complete set of case reporters for a single state would typically run to hundreds of volumes with new ones arriving monthly. A full set of Shepard's Citations (which told you if a case have been overturned or questioned in later cases or just where it was cited with approval) took roughly a full shelf of a full sized book case when limited to a single state. Any law firm that is at least fifteen or twenty years old needed them when they bought them and lawyers hate to throw anything away. Case law research is now predominantly online. The last time I used Shepard's citations and hard copy case reporters on a regular basis was a decade ago. Law journal research is also predominantly online now. I sent most of my uglier and numerous law books (including several dozen volumes of an outdated legal encyclopedia summarizing case law) to the recycling bin about six or seven years ago. Do they actually reference them, especially when so much information is searchable and indexed online? Lawyers still routinely use statute books in states where they practice, court rules, standard jury instructions, and to a somewhat lesser extent treatises on different areas of the law (including the Restatements of Law). Now and then, lawyers will still use a hard copy of a West Digest. And, I have yet to encounter a lawyer who doesn't have at least one or two decent sized book cases full of law books. In statutes and court rules (and regulations), typesetting details that can get mangled online are important and browsing a structured text can be easier to do on paper than online. There are some regulations available only in online versions that I print for ease of use (e.g. Colorado's marijuana regulations and its Medicaid regulations). I also print for ease of use my state's title standards (for use in determining if someone has marketable title to real estate), even though they don't have the force of law. I also keep a few hard copy model statutes with the official commentary. It can also be hard on the eyes to look at a computer screen non-stop all day, so looking at something you use regularly on paper can be a relief. Are the books updated regularly? or are these the books they graduated with, and are rarely changed out? Statutes and court rules and jury instructions are typically updated annually, following each year's legislative session. Treatises are updated with "pocket parts" every year, that are added to a hardbound edition that is updated at most, every several years. A pocket part is a softbound update with the same section organization as the underlying treatise that has a flap the fits into a pocket in the back flap of a hard cover treatise. Bigger "pocket parts" are printed as thin softcover bonus volumes to the original treatises. I also keep a current softbound "Bluebook" (the reference regarding how legal materials should be cited to in legal documents and legal scholarship) and several high end dictionaries including Black's Law Dictionary, the OED and a few others in hard copy (because browsing is easier when you don't know exactly how a word is spelled). I keep many of my law school textbooks, which some people do, and other people don't, and I buy new treatises especially when I move into a new area of law practice where background guidance is useful. Do the books exist purely for psychological impressions, or is there a utilitarian purpose? Both. Sometimes old books that don't have much ongoing practical use are kept on the shelves because they are pretty. For example, I don't really need a hard copy of my outdated New York State Statutes, but they look good (even though I practice mostly in Colorado and look up New York State statutes online when I need to actually use them). But, I use hard copy statutes and court rule books for the state where I practice on pretty much a daily basis and use hard copy treatises at least several times a week in my law practice. In that respect, I am not atypical, although I probably use hard copy books more than younger lawyers do. Of course, even among these books, some volumes are used much more often than others. I look at a volume of insurance industry regulation statutes at most, once a year, while I read the volume related to divorce and probate at least once or twice a week, for example. Hard copy books are also useful for pinning down the corners of blueprints and surveys when you are in litigation where those kinds of oversized paper documents are at issue. ;)
The Constitution of the United States: Analysis and Interpretation, also called the &quot;Constitution Annotated&quot;, is the constitution of record: the only constitutional law treatise formally authorized by federal law, the Constitution Annotated functions as the official Constitution of record What version is authoritative can be meaningful. See William W. Van Alstyne, &quot;A Constitutional Conundrum of Second Amendment Commas&quot;. And although phoog and I have provided different answers, I think we are both correct. The text as shown in the Constitution Annotated is what is universally accepted as the version to quote from in judicial submissions and reasons. But it's because it has drawn from the version in phoog's answer. Basically, the document in the archives is authoritative, but there is no need for writers and judges to go look at that when they are quoting, because the Constitution Annotated is deemed to have replicated that content faithfully.