Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Informal Governance Of The United States, Edward Lee

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Linguistic Estoppel: A Custodial Interrogation Subject’S Reliance On Traditional Language Customs When Facing Unknown Expectations For Legally Efficacious Speech, Taylor J. Smith

BYU Law Review

For various reasons, speakers often communicate indirectly, hiding their words’ true meaning beneath an apparent surface meaning. For example, a woman trying to brush off her co-worker’s date invitation might respond, “I have to prepare for a presentation tomorrow.” While the words’ surface meaning doesn’t relate to the date invitation, the hearer usually understands the underlying message—that is to say, the words’ function differs from their form. However, because the law’s language ideology requires directness and surface-level meaning, lay-speaking interrogation subjects often have difficulty effectively invoking their Miranda rights. Because the legal system’s search for determinacy often results in reliance …

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2020, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• A Feast of Fat Things
• And When He Came to Himself
• No Other Gods Before Me
• The Economics of Goodness

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Corpus Linguistics And Gun Control: Why Heller Is Wrong, Kyra Babcock Woods

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Semantic Originalism, Moral Kinds, And The Meaning Of The Constitution, Ash Mcmurray

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comments On James C. Phillips & Jesse Egbert, Advancing Law And Corpus Linguistics: Importing Principles And Practices From Survey And Content-Analysis Methodologies To Improve Corpus Design And Analysis, Edward Finegan

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Lawyer’S Introduction To Meaning In The Framework Of Corpus Linguistics, Neal Goldfarb

BYU Law Review

Corpus linguistics is more than just a new tool for legal interpretation. Work in corpus linguistics has generated new ways of thinking about word meaning and about the interpretation of words in context. These insights challenge the assumptions that lawyers and judges generally make about words and their meaning. Although the words that make up a sentence are generally regarded as the basic units of meaning, corpus analysis has shown that in many cases, the meaning of a word as it is used in a given context is a function, not of the word by itself, but of the word’s …

Triangulating Public Meaning: Corpus Linguistics, Immersion, And The Constitutional Record, Lawrence B. Solum

BYU Law Review

This Article contributes to the development of an originalist methodology by making the case for an approach that employs three distinct methods, each of which serves as a basis for confirming or questioning the results reached by the other two. This approach will be called the Method of Triangulation. The three component techniques are as follows: 1. The Method of Corpus Linguistics: The method of corpus linguistics employs large-scale data sets (corpora) that provide evidence of linguistic practice. 2. The Originalist Method of Immersion: The method of immersion requires researchers to immerse themselves in the linguistic and conceptual world of …

Evidence-Based Jurisprudence Meets Legal Linguistics—Unlikely Blends Made In Germany, Hanjo Hamann, Friedemann Vogel

BYU Law Review

German legal thinking is renowned for its hair-splittingly sophisticated dogmatism. Yet, some of its other contributions to research are frequently overlooked, both at home and abroad. Two such secondary streams recently coalesced into a new corpus-based research approach to legal practice: Empirical legal research (which had already developed in Germany by 1913) and research on language and law (following German pragmatist philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work of 1953). This Article introduces both research traditions in their current German incarnations (Evidence-Based Jurisprudence and Legal Linguistics) and shows how three common features—their pragmatist observation of social practices, their interest in dissecting legal authority, …

Advancing Law And Corpus Linguistics: Importing Principles And Practices From Survey And Content Analysis Methodologies To Improve Corpus Design And Analysis, James C. Phillips, Jesse Egbert

BYU Law Review

The nascent field of law and corpus linguistics has much to offer legal interpretation. But to do so, it must more fully incorporate principles from survey and content-analysis methodologies used in the social sciences. Importing such will provide greater rigor, transparency, reproducibility, and accuracy in the important quest to determine the meaning of the law. This Article highlights some of those principles to provide a best- practices guide to those seeking to perform law and corpus linguistic analysis.

Corpus Linguistics As A Tool In Legal Interpretation, Lawrence M. Solan, Tammy Gales

BYU Law Review

In this paper, we set out to explore conditions in which the use of large linguistic corpora can be optimally employed by judges and others tasked with construing authoritative legal documents. Linguistic corpora, sometimes containing billions of words, are a source of information about the distribution of language usage. Thus, corpora and the tools for using them are most likely to assist in addressing legal issues when the law considers the distribution of language usage to be legally relevant. As Thomas R. Lee and Stephen C. Mouritsen have so ably demonstrated in earlier work, corpus analysis is especially helpful when …

Ordinary Meaning And Corpus Linguistics, Stefan Th. Gries, Brian G. Slocum

BYU Law Review

This Article discusses how corpus analysis, and similar empirically based methods of language study, can help inform judicial assessments about language meaning. We first briefly outline our view of legal language and interpretation in order to underscore the importance of the ordinary meaning doctrine, and thus the relevance of tools such as corpus analysis, to legal interpretation. Despite the heterogeneity of the judicial interpretive process, and the importance of the specific context relevant to the statute at issue, conventions of meaning that cut across contexts are a necessary aspect of legal interpretation. Because ordinary meaning must in some sense be …

Datamining The Meaning(S) Of Progress, Jake Linford

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dictionary As A Specialized Corpus, Jennifer L. Mascott

BYU Law Review

Scholars consider reliance on dictionary definitions to be the antithesis of objective, big-data analysis of ordinary meaning. This Article contests that notion, arguing that when dictionaries are treated as a specialized database, or corpus, they provide invaluable textured understanding of a term. Words appear in dictionaries both as terms being defined and as terms defining other words. Examination of every reference to a contested term throughout a dictionary’s definitional entries of other words may substantially benefit statutory and constitutional interpretation. Because dictionaries catalog language, their use as a specialized corpus provides invaluable insight into the ways a particular word is …

The Original Meaning Of “Religion” In The First Amendment: A Test Case Of Originalism’S Utilization Of Corpus Linguistics, Lee J. Strang

BYU Law Review

Originalism is the theory of constitutional interpretation that identifies the constitutional text’s public meaning when it was ratified as its authoritative meaning. Corpus linguistics is the study of word-use regularities and patterns, primarily in written texts. In a prior article, I argued that originalists should utilize corpus linguistics to facilitate originalism’s capacity to accurately uncover this original meaning. However, my arguments there were theoretical; this Essay provides a “test case” of corpus linguistics’ capacity to increase originalism’s methodological accuracy. This Essay accomplishes three modest goals. First, it provides a practical example of the application of corpus linguistics to originalism. This …

The Power Of Words: A Comment On Hamann And Vogel’S Evidence-Based Jurisprudence Meets Legal Linguistics—Unlikely Blends Made In Germany, Mark C. Suchman

BYU Law Review

By offering an international and interdisciplinary point of comparison, Hamann and Vogel demonstrate that current American forays into corpus-based legal scholarship reflect only a small sliver of the full range of possibilities for such research. This Comment considers several key branching points that may lie ahead, as the nascent literature begins to mature. In particular, the Comment examines two vexing ambiguities in the corpus-linguistic agenda: the first centers on the ambiguous meaning of legal “empiricism”; the second, on the ambiguous relationship between words and actions. To achieve its full potential, legal corpus linguistics will need to move beyond mere description, …

Before There Were Mouseholes: Resurrecting The Non-Delegation Doctrine, Joel Hood

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

What Lies Beneath: Interpretive Methodology, Constitutional Authority, And The Case Of Originalism, Christopher J. Peters

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Liberal Democracy And The Right To Religious Freedom, Aldir Guedes Soriano

BYU Law Review

Foremost, this paper examines the current situation of the rights to religious freedom and democracy around the world, which deserve attention and concern. Civil liberties are currently in crossfire. This article examines the foundations of the right to religious freedom. Depending on the philosophical foundations, there are two different rationales for the right to religious freedom: liberal and anti-liberal. According to the liberal tradition, the best reason to protect religious freedom rests upon the autonomy of the individual conscience. It is clear that a constitutional democracy does not allow the establishment of any religion by the government, using either executive …

The Dual-Faceted Federalism Framework And The Derivative Constitutional Status Of Local Governments, Michael W. Cannon

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fair Housing And Roommates: Contesting A Presumption Of Constitutionality, Brooke Wright

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deliberative Constitutionalism, John J. Worley

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shibboleths And Ceballos. Eroding Constitutional Rights Through Pseudocommunication, Susan Stuart

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clark Memorandum: Fall 1999, J. Reuben Clark Law Society, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The Clark Memorandum

• The Four Deans
• Rex E. Lee
• Carl S. Hawkins
• Bruce C. Hafen
• H. Reese Hansen
• Gettysburg (Matthew Kennington)
• High Crimes and Misdemeanors? (Thomas R. Lee)

Katzenbach V. Mcclung: The Abandonment Of Federalism In The Name Of Rational Basis, James M. Mcgoldrick

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Clark Memorandum: Spring 1999, J. Reuben Clark Law Society, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The Clark Memorandum

• Weightier Matters (Elder Dallin H. Oaks)
• The Constitutional Thought of J. Reuben Clark, Jr. (J. David Gowdy)
• A Courtroom with a View (Joyce Janetski)
• The Challenge (Alexander B. Morrison)

Lifting Printz Off Dual Sovereignty: Back To A Functional Test For The Etiquette Of Federalism, Alfred R. Light

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Federalism And The Protection Of Rights: The Modern Ninth Amendment's Spreading Confusion, Thomas B. Mcaffee

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federalism, Separation Of Powers, And The Legacy Of Garcia, Rex E. Lee

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Five Supreme Court Constitutions: Race-Based Scrutiny Past, Present, And Future, David Zimmerman

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.