In the current issue of the Yale Law Journal, John Calhoun (Yale Law School, J.D. '15) has the note Measuring the Fortress: Explaining Trends in Supreme Court and Circuit Court Dictionary Use (124 Yale L.J. 484 (2014)). Here is the abstract:
Recent research argues that the increasing use of dictionaries in Supreme Court and circuit court opinions may pose risks to the legitimacy, credibility, and accuracy of federal appellate court judgments. However, it is hard to understand why dictionary use has grown so much over the last thirty years, because existing data on Justices’ and judges’ dictionary use is insufficient. This Note introduces a comprehensive dataset covering dictionary usage in every Supreme Court and circuit court opinion from 1950 to 2010. The dataset allows one to test leading theories about Supreme Court dictionary usage by seeing how those same theories fare in light of circuit court dictionary usage trends. Such comparisons suggest that the Supreme Court’s increasing dictionary usage reflects, among other factors, fear of charges of judicial activism, the rising popularity of originalism and textualism, the persuasive power of Justice Scalia, and an increased number of criminal law cases on the Court’s docket.
Posted at 6:53 AM