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41 " With a legislative assembly, the same may or may not be true. If a legislative printing office formats bills in its own way after their passage, then the formatting is simply not part of the adopted text and is irrelevant. "
― Antonin Scalia , Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts
42 " the crucial question becomes which theory of textual interpretation is compatible with democracy. Originalism unquestionably is. Nonoriginalism, by contrast, imposes on society statutory prescriptions that were never democratically adopted. "
43 " that is not just a relative pronoun but also a stand-alone pronoun, a demonstrative adjective, and a conjunction. "
44 " Properly speaking, a proviso is a clause that introduces a condition by the word provided. "
45 " Another characteristic of Homo hibernicus—I know you would be annoyed if I did not mention it—is quickness of intellect. Now I must admit that on this point you Irish may be better judges of yourselves than an outsider like me would be. Because the Irish have all sorts of ways of seeming to be knowledgeable when they are not. One, of course, is lying. "
― Antonin Scalia , Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
46 " So unless the text itself is ambiguous, the parol-evidence rule excludes precontractual indications of what the parties thought they were achieving. "
47 " It can convert nouns into verbs, and change a description of a panda bear (“Eats shoots and leaves”) into a description of Jesse James (“Eats, shoots, and leaves”). No intelligent construction of a text can ignore its punctuation. "
48 " In statutory interpretation there is, for example, the rule of lenity, whereby ambiguity in a criminal law is resolved in favor of the defendant; and in interpretation of private contracts there is the rule that ambiguity will be construed contra proferentem, against the party that drafted the instrument. "
49 " A traditional and hence anticipated rule of interpretation, no less than a traditional and hence anticipated meaning of a word, imparts meaning. "
50 " For example, post can refer to a piece of timber set upright, a position of employment, or mail. "
51 " But more often the language is not plain and unambiguous, so that to figure out its meaning, the implicit process of interpretation that we apply to plain and unambiguous language must be made express. "
52 " Given a rule of law that [those] conditions generically described as A produce a certain legal liability or other consequence X, does the specific fact or group of facts n fall within the genus A? "
53 " (conveying two very different senses, as when table could refer either to a piece of furniture or to a numerical chart) "
54 " As Justinian’s Digest put it: A verbis legis non est recedendum1 (“Do not depart from the words of the law”). "
55 " First, the purpose must be derived from the text, "
56 " Second, the purpose must be defined precisely, and not in a fashion that smuggles in the answer to the question before the decision-maker. "
57 " fair reading”: determining the application of a governing text to given facts on the basis of how a reasonable reader, fully competent in the language, would have understood the text at the time it was issued. The endeavor requires aptitude in language, sound judgment, the suppression of personal preferences regarding the outcome, and, with older texts, historical linguistic research. "
58 " Third, the purpose is to be described as concretely as possible, not abstractly. "
59 " British grammarian: “It is clearly desirable that an anaphoric (backward-looking) or cataphoric (forward-looking) pronoun should be placed as near as the construction allows to the noun or noun phrase to which it refers, and in such a manner that there is no risk of ambiguity. "
60 " Fourth, except in the rare case of an obvious scrivener’s error, purpose—even purpose as most narrowly defined—cannot be used to contradict text or to supplement it. "