Carissa Byrne Hessick (University of North Carolina School of Law) has posted Corpus Linguistics and the Criminal Law (forthcoming, Brigham Young University Law Review, Vol. 2018, No. 4, 2018) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This brief response to Ordinary Meaning and Corpus Linguistics, an essay by Stefan Gries and Brian Slocum, explains why corpus linguistics represents a radical break from current statutory interpretation practice, and it argues that corpus linguistics ought not be adopted as an interpretive methodology, especially for interpreting criminal laws. Corpus linguistics has superficial appeal because it promises to increase predictability and to decrease the role of judges’ personal preferences in statutory interpretation. But there are reasons to doubt that corpus linguistics can achieve these goals. More importantly, corpus linguistics sacrifices other, more important values, including notice and accountability.
(An earlier post alluded to this paper but did not provide the abstract).
For other recent papers and commentary on corpus linguistics, see here (James Cleith Phillips & Sara White); here and here (Neal Goldfarb), here (Justice Thomas Lee and Stephen Mouritsen); and here (Lawrence Solan & Tammy Gales), plus additional blog posts by Professor Hessick here and here. This has suddenly become a very big topic of interest.
Posted at 6:36 AM