I Am Not a Lawyer

I’m not planning to talk about SCOTUS (that’s the Supreme Court Of The United States) much on this blog, in part because everybody else already does it. I’d be a mouse among giants. However, a post on the court’s decision in Ali v. Bureau of Prisons on California Appellate Report caught my eye because it combines two subjects near to my heart: appellate law and copy editing.

This is one of those decisions that turns on how the judges interpret vague language in the law. Ali is a prisoner whose prayer rug and Koran and some other religious stuff disappeared when he gave them to guards, during a move from one prison to another. He got annoyed and sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows lawsuits against the federal government when federal employees commit torts (basically, when they screw up in a way that’s illegal or really careless). Except that the Act gives an exception for property detained by “any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer.” Since prison guards are law enforcement officers, courts kept telling him he had no case. Today, the Supreme Court did the same thing with a 5-4 decision.

As I understand it, the majority says the law is straightforward: “any officer of the law” means any officer of the law. Period. You can’t sue cops for taking your stuff. The minority’s two dissents, which the Wall Street Journal Law Blog called “scorching”, say the wording is vague and should be interpreted with the context, using two heavy Latin legal phrases (ejusdem generis and noscitur a sociis) to support it. Then they say the majority is implicitly relying on a comma for its interpretation! Commas matter, guys. So do word choice and context, as the dissenters say at some length. Sloppy legal writing can land you (or the hapless beneficiaries of your laws) in court.

Justice Breyer had a particularly amusing way of explaining why he finds the word “any” too vague. For him, it’s not the meaning of the word that matters; it’s the scope of the word’s meaning. I can’t imagine that people who regularly read law blogs have missed this, but if you have, allow me to repeat it:

The word “any” is of no help because all speakers (including writers and legislators) who use general words such as “all,” “any,” “never,” and “none” normally rely upon context to indicate the limits of time and place within which they intend those words to do their linguistic work. And with the possible exception of the assertion of a universal truth, say by a mathematician, scientist, philosopher, or theologian, such limits almost always exist. When I call out to my wife, “There isn’t any butter,” I do not mean, “There isn’t any butter in town.” The context makes clear to her that I am talking about the contents of our refrigerator. That is to say, it is context, not a dictionary, that sets the boundaries of time, place, and circumstance within which words such as “any” will apply.

Love it! (Majoring in English will do that to a person.)