Communicative content and legal content

Notre Dame Law Review

Volumn 89, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 479-519

  Solum, Lawrence B ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER   (United States)

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EID: 84891274990     PISSN: 07453515     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (122)

1. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 291-92 (1964) (applying First Amendment freedom of speech to state defamation law).
2. See ROBERT W. BENNETT & LAWRENCE B. SOLUM, CONSTITUTIONAL ORIGINALISM 67 (2011).
3. See WILLIAM N. ESKRIDGE, JR., DYNAMIC STATUTORY INTERPRETATION 13 (1994);
4. Abbe R. Gluck, The Stales as laboratories of Statutory Interpretation: Methodological Consensus and the New Modified Textualism, 119 YALE LJ. 1750, 1762-64 (2010);
5. John F. Manning, Textualism and Legislative Intent, 91 VA. L. REV. 419, 431-32 (2005).
6. See Lawrence B. Solum, The Supreme Court in Bondage: Constitutional Stare Decisis, Legal Formalism, and the Future of Unenumerated Rights, 9 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 155, 188-89 (2006);
7. see also Charles W. Collier, Precedent and Legal Authority: A Critical History, 1988 WIS. L. REV. 771;
8. Arthur L. Goodhart, Determining the Ratio Decidendi of a Case, 40 YALE LJ. 161 (1930);
9. Max Radin, Case Law and Stare Decisis: Concerning Präjudizienrecht in Amerika, 33 COLUM. L. REV. 199, 200-01 (1933);
10. Frederick Schauer, Precedent, 39 STAN. L. REV. 571 (1987).
11. Ronald Dworkin uses the phrase, "an enactment force of precedent" to express an idea similar to the notion of a legislative holding. RONALD DWORKIN, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY 111 (1977).
12. Lawrence B. Solum, Semantic Originalem (Illinois Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 07-24, 2008), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=l 120244.
13. Lawrence B. Solum, Faith and Fidelity: Originalism and the Possibility of Constitutional Redemption, 91 TEX. L. REV. 147, 154-155 (2012)
14. (reviewing JACK M. BALKIN, CONSTITUTIONAL REDEMPTION: POLITICAL FAITH IN AN UNJUST WORLD (2011)
15. and JACK M. BALKIN, LIVING ORIGINALISM (2011)).
16. Tun-Jen Chiang & Lawrence B. Solum, The Interpretation-Construction Distinction in Patent Law, 123 YALE LJ. 530 (2013).
17. FRANCIS LIEBER, LEGAL AND POLITICAL HERMENEUTICS 56, 63-64 (1839). Lieber's definition of construction is related to the definition offered here: "Construction is the drawing of conclusions respecting subjects, that lie beyond the direct expression of the text, from elements known from and given in the text-conclusions which are in the spirit, though not within the letter of the text." Id. at 56. For examples of the use of the distinction by courts and scholars
18. Lawrence B. Solum, Originalem and Constitutional Construction, 82 FORDHAM L. REV. 453, 486-87 (2013).
19. See Ram Constr. Co. v. Am. States Ins. Co., 749 F.2d 1049, 1053 (3d Cir. 1984);
20. Williams v. Humble Oil & Ref. Co., 432 F.2d 165,179 (5th Cir. 1970);
21. In reXTI Xonix Techs., Inc., 156 B.R. 821, 829 n.6 (Bankr. D. Or. 1993);
22. Fausel v. JRJ Enters., 603 N.W.2d 612, 618 (Iowa 1999);
23. Grinnell Mut. Reins. Co. v. Voeltz, 431 N.W.2d 783, 785 (Iowa 1988);
24. Allen v. Highway Equip. Co., 239 N.W.2d 135, 139 (Iowa 1976);
25. Berg v. Hudesman, 801 P.2d 222, 226 (Wash. 1990);
26. Joyner v. Adams, 361 S.E.2d 902, 905 (N.C. Ct. App. 1987);
27. Chase Nat'l Bank v. Chi. Tide & Trust Co., 299 N.Y.S. 926, 937-38 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1934).
28. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 200 cmt. c, and rep.'s note (1981 );
29. RESTATEMENT OF CONFLICT OF LAWS §§ 214, 251 (1934);
30. ARTHUR LINTON CORBIN, CORBIN ON CONTRACTS § 532, at 2 (1960);
31. E. ALLAN FARNSWORTH, CONTRACTS § 7.11, at 459 (4th ed. 2004);
32. JOHN HENRY WIGMORE, A TREATISE ON THE ANGLO-AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EVIDENCE IN TRIALS AT COMMON LAW § 2464 (2d ed. 1923);
33. SAMUEL WIL-USTON, A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF CONTRACTS §§ 600-02 (3d ed. 1961).
34. Lawrence B. Solum, The Interpretation-Construction Distinction, 27 CONST. COMMENT. 95 (2010).
35. RONALD DWORKIN, LAW'S EMPIRE (1986).
36. JOHN FINNIS, NATURAL LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS (2d ed. 2011).
37. Mark Greenberg, The Standard Picture and Its Discontents, in 1 OXFORD STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW 39 (Leslie Green & Brian Leiter eds., 2011).
38. H.L.A. HART, THE CONCEPT OF LAW (Peter Cane et al. eds., 2d ed. 1994).
39. Michael S. Moore, The Semantics of Judging, 54 S. CAL. L. REV. 151 (1981).
40. MARK C. MURPHY, NATURAL LAW IN JURISPRUDENCE AND POLITICS (2006).
41. JOSEPH RAZ, BETWEEN AUTHORITY AND INTERPRETATION (2009).
42. SCOTT J. SHAPIRO, LEGALITY (2011).
43. J.L. AUSTIN, HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS (J.O. Urmson & Marina Sbisà eds., 2d ed. 1975).
44. See 2 JOHN LYONS, SEMANTICS 731 (1977);
45. Mitchell S. Green, IUocutionary Force and Semantic Content, 23 LINGUISTICS & PHIL. 435 (2000);
46. Kepa Korta & John Perry, Pragmatics, STAN. ENCYC. PHIL, (last revised Mar. 21, 2011), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatics/#Farl .2.
47. The phrases come from the tide of Roscoe Pound's famous article. See Roscoe Pound, Law in Books and Law in Action, 44 AM. L. REV. 12 (1910).
48. See DONALD DAVIDSON, INQUIRIES INTO TRUTH AND INTERPRETATION 3 (2001);
49. Richard E. Grandy, Understanding and the Principle of Compositionality, in 4 PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES: ACTION THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 557 (James E. Tomberlin ed., 1990).
50. See Exxon Corp. v. Hunt, 475 U.S. 355, 370 (1986);
51. Bob Jones Univ. v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 731-32 (1974);
52. McFeely v. Comm'r, 296 U.S. 102, 111 (1935);
53. Panama R.R. v. Rock, 266 U.S. 209, 215 (1924) (Holmes, J., dissenting);
54. Richard A. Epstein, The Pitfalls of Interpretation, 7 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 101 (1984);
55. Brian Flanagan, Revisiting the Contribution of Literal Meaning to Legal Meaning, 30 O.J.L.S. 255, 255 (2010);
56. Michael S. Moore, A NaturalLaw Theory of Interpretation, 58 S. CAL. L. REV. 277, 290-91 (1985);
57. John R. Searle, Literal Meaning, 13 ERKENNTNIS 207 (1978). We can distinguish "literal meaning" and "plain meaning"-sometimes meaning is plain even where it is not literal, because context makes the meaning unambiguous.
58. For sources discussing literal meaning, see Gregory Klass, Meaning, Purpose, and Cause in the Law of Deception, 100 GEO. L.J. 449, 456-57 (2012);
59. Peter Meijes Tiersma, The Language of Perjury: "Literal Truth, " Ambiguity, and the False Statement Requirement, 63 S. CAL. L. REV. 373, 379-80 (1990);
60. Steven Walt, The State of Debate over the Incorporation Strategy in Contract Law, 38 UCC L J. 255, 259 n.10 (2006).
61. U.S. CONST, art. I, § 9, cl. 5.
62. On the meaning of the clause, see Dooley v. United States, 183 U.S. 151, 151-58 (1901) (holding that the clause did not apply to an import tax applied by Puerto Rico to exports from one of the states by way of the port of New York).
63. Robyn Carston, Linguistic Communication and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, 165 SYNTHESE 321, 323 (2008).
64. Gottlieb Frege, Über Sinn und Bedeutung, in 100 ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PHILOSOPHIE UND PHILOSOPHISCHE KRITIK 1, 25-50 (1892).
65. LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS \ 43 (P.M. S. Hacker & Joachim Schulte eds., G.E.M. Anscombe et al. trans., 4th ed. 2009) ("For a large class of cases of the employment of the word 'meaning'-though not for all-this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.").
66. SAUL A. KRIPKE, NAMING AND NECESSITY (1980). The origins of the so-called "New Theory of Reference" are disputed.
67. See THE NEW THEORY OF REFERENCE: KRIPKE, MARCUS, AND ITS ORIGINS (Paul W. Humphreys & James H. Fetzer eds., 1998).
68. See PAUL GRICE, STUDIES IN THE WAY OF WORDS 3-143 (1989).
69. " Id. at v; 5ee also Jeffrey Goldsworthy, Legislative Intentions, Legislative Supremacy, and Legal Positivism, 42 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 493, 510 n.57 (2005);
70. B. Jessie Hill, Putting Religious Symbolism in Context: A Linguistic Critique of the Endorsement Test, 104 MICH. L. REV. 491, 506 n.80 (2005);
71. John F. Manning, What Divides Textualists from Purposivists* 106 COLUM. L. REV. 70, 72 n.7 (2006). I owe a great debt to Rogers Albritton who pointed me to Grice when we discussed these issues in the early 1980s.
72. H.P. Grice, Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning, 4 FOUND. LANGUAGE 225, 225 (1968). 37 Id.
73. This example is a slightly altered version of the thought experiment originally offered by Richard Warner. See Richard Warner, Introduction: Orice on Reasons and Rationality, in PAUL GRICE, ASPECTS OF REASON, at ix (Richard Warner ed., 2001).
74. Richard E. Grandy & Richard Warner, Paul Grice, STAN. ENCYC. PHIL, (last revised Sep.t. 9, 2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/ entries/grice/.
75. See Peter Vanderschraaf & Giacomo Sillari, Common Knowledge, STAN. ENCYC. PHIL, (last revised July 23, 2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2013/ entries/common-knowledge/ (distinguishing "mutual knowledge," which is shared without knowledge of the fact of sharing, from "common knowledge," which requires knowledge of the fact that content is shared);
76. see also MICHAEL SUK-YOUNG CHWE, RATIONAL RITUAL: CULTURE, COORDINATION, AND COMMON KNOWLEDGE 3, 9-10 (2001)
77. See DAVID LEWIS, CONVENTION: A PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY 52-60 (1969).
78. Heidi M. Hurd, Sovereignty in Silence, 99 YALE LJ. 945, 964 (1990). 44 Id.
79. I am using the word "type" in the technical sense in which "types" are distinguished from "tokens." See Linda Wetzel, Types and Tokens, STAN. ENCYC. PHILOSOPHY (Apr. 28, 2006), http://plato. stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/ ("The distinction between a type and its tokens is an ontological one between a general sort of thing and its particular concrete instances (to put it in an intuitive and preliminary way).").
80. Lawrence B. Solum, The Boundaries of Legal Discourse and the Debate over Default Rules in Contract, 3 S. CAL. INTERDISC. LJ. 311, 324 n.23 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted).
81. There is a large body of literature on default and mandatory rules in contract law. See, e.g., Ian Ayres & Robert Gertner, Filling Gaps in Incomplete Contracts: An Economic Theory of Default Rules, 99 YALE LJ. 87, 127-30 (1989);
82. Randy E. Barnett, The Sound of Silence: Default Rules and Contractual Consent, 78 VA. L. REV. 821, 827 (1992);
83. Stephen J. Ware, Default Rules from Mandatory Rules: Privatizing Law Through Arbitration, 83 MINN. L. REV. 703, 704 (1999).
84. GREGORY E. MAGGS & PETER J. SMITH, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 9 (2d ed. 2011).
85. Vasan Kesavan & Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Interpretive Force of the Constitution's Secret Drafting History, 91 GEO. LJ. 1113, 1115 (2003).
86. THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, at 590 (Max Farrand ed., rev. ed. 1937). We also have various reports about the work of the Committee of Style, for example in private letters. Gouverneur Morris reports that he drafted the final version of the Constitution in a letter to Thomas Pickering. Gouverneur Morris to Timothy Pickering December 22, 1814
87. Of course, verification of this claim would require a systematic examination of the records of the ratification debates. For these records, see THE DEBATES OF THE SEVERAL STATE CONVENTIONS, ON THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION, AS RECOMMENDED BY THE GENERAL CONVENTION AT PHILADELPHIA IN 1787 (Jonathan Elliot ed., 2d ed. 1856), available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ amlaw/lwed.html (last visited Oct. 22, 2013).
88. See James H. Hutson, The Creation of the Constitution: The Integrity of the Documentary Record, 65 TEX. L. REV. 1 (1986).
89. ST. GEORGE TUCKER, BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES 59 (1803).
90. As a consequence, the theory of clause meaning does not suffer from a "missing step" problem. SeeAbner S. Greene, The Missing Step of Textualism, 74 FORDHAM L. REV. 1913, 1923 (2006). Assessment of clause meaning does not require arbitrary exclusion of any information about the context of utterance-all such evidence can come in, but only in order to determine the clause meaning, that is, the conventional semantic meaning in light of the publicly available context.
91. The idea of a division of linguistic labor is usually attributed to Hilary Putnam. See Hilary Putnam, The Meaning of 'Meaning, ' in 2 PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS: MIND, LANGUAGE AND REALITY 215, 227 (1985).
92. I use the word "stipulation" to refer to the process that creates the connection created between a proper name, like "Congress of the United States" and the thing it names. In the philosophy of language, this is sometimes called a "dubbing" or "baptism." See Sam Cumming, Names, STAN. ENCYC. PHIL, (last revised Mar 19, 2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/.
93. See Wayne Davis, Implicature, STAN. ENCYC. PHIL, (last revised Sept. 22, 2010), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/;
94. see also Jeffrey Goldsworthy, Constitutional Cultures, Democracy, and Unwritten Principles, 2012 U. III. L. REV. 683, 698;
95. Andrei A. Marmor, Can the IMW Imply More Than It Says? On Some Pragmatic Aspects of Strategic Speech, in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE IN THE LAW 83 (Andrei A. Marmor & Scott Soames eds., 2011).
96. See Kent Bach, Conversational Implidture, 9 MIND & LANGUAGE 124, 126 (1994).
97. See Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490, 520 (1981) (holding that a city ordinance restricting billboard advertising was an unconstitutional exercise of city's police power and abridged First Amendment rights).
98. See New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 714 (1971) (per curiam) (holding that the government did not meet its burden to enjoin newspaper from publishing classified information).
99. See Richard B. Cappalli, At the Point of Decision: The Common Law's Advantage over the Civil Law, 12 TEMP. INT'L & COMP. LJ. 87, 91 (1998) (noting the "large, systemic differences in theory and practice" between common law and civil law traditions).
100. See Richard A. Posner, Legal Scholarship Today, 115 HARV. L. REV. 1314, 1320 (2002) (observing "manyjudicial opinions were and are ghostwritten, by law clerks").
101. See Louis Lusky, Footnote Redux: A Carotene Products Reminiscence, 82 COLUM. L. REV. 1093 (1982).
102. See Felix Gilman, The Famous Footnote Four: A History of the Carolene Products Footnote, 46 S. TEX. L. REV. 163,196 (2004);
103. Peter Linze, The Carolene Products Footnote and the Preferred Position of Individual Rights: Louis Lusky and John Hart Ely vs. Harlan Fiske Stone, 12 CONST. COMMENT. 277, 278 (1995);
104. Matthew Perry, Justice Stone and Footnote 4, 6 GEO. MASON U. CIV. RTS. L.J. 35, 43 (1996).
105. See America's Founding Fathers: Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, NAT'L ARCHIVES, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/ constitution-founding-fathers-overview.html (last visited Nov. 15, 2013) (noting that only thirty-five of the fifty-five delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention were lawyers or had legal training).
106. Kathryn A. McAluney, Equal Protection, in Developments in State Constitutional Law: 1995, 27 RUTGERS LJ. 963, 1074 (1996) (noting the three levels of scrutiny for Equal Protection analysis).
107. INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 958-59 (1983).
108. Mark Greenberg, Legislation as Communication? Legal Interpretation and the Study of Linguistic Communication, in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE IN THE LAW, 218.
109. For discussions of deliberate ambiguity in contracts, see B. Douglas Bemheim & Michael D. Whinston, Incomplete Contracts and Strategic Ambiguity, 88 AM. ECON. REV. 902 (1998)
110. Gregory M. Duhl, Conscious Ambiguity: Slaying Cerberus in the Interpretation of Contractual Inconsistencies, 71 U. PITT. L. REV. 71 (2009).
111. See George I. Lovell, That Sick Chicken Won't Hunt: The Limits of a Judicially Enforced Non-delegation Doctrine, 17 CONST. COMMENT. 79, 104-05 (2000) (discussing deliberate legislative ambiguity).
112. For an example of a gap, see Keith E. Whittington, Constructing a New American Constitution, 27 CONST. COMMENT. 119, 123-24 (2010) ("Arguably, the removal power is an instance of such a gap. The U.S. Constitution specifies how executive branch officials are to be appointed, but does not specify how they are to be removed from office, except by impeachment. The First Congress puzzled over several alternatives as to how officers might be removed and how such removals might be constitutionally justified. The statutes creating the Cabinet departments settled on unilateral presidential removal, but there was little agreement in Congress over the rationale behind that setdement. A removal power is a requisite part of the constitutional scheme.").
113. The general rule might be subject to limited defeasibility conditions, for emergencies or radically unanticipated circumstances. See generally THE LOGIC OF LEGAL REQUIREMENTS (Tordi Ferrer Beltran & Giovanni Battista Ratti eds., 2012) (collecting essays that discuss the idea of defeasibility in law).
114. For a contrary view, see Ephraim Unell, The First Word Revisited 11 & n.51 (February 26, 2013) (unpublished paper), available at http://ssrn.com/ abstract= 2219953.
115. For an extended discussion of these issues in the constitutional context, see Lawrence B. Solum, Originalism and the Unwritten Constitution, 2013 U. III. L. REV. 1935.
116. See John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, Originalism and the Good Constitution, 98 GEO. LJ. 1693,1741-42 (2010)
117. Adam M. Samaha, Dead Hand Arguments and Constitutional Interpretation, 108 COLUM. L. REV. 606 (2008) (providing a comprehensive account of dead hand arguments)
118. David A. Strauss, Common Law, Common Ground, and Jefferson's Principle, 112 YALE LJ. 1717, 1717 (2003)
119. See Kurt T. Lash, Originalism, Popular Sovereignty, and Reverse Stare Decisis, 93 VA. L. REV. 1437, 1440 (2007) (asserting that that popular sovereignty is the "most common and most influential justification for originalism").
120. See Lawrence B. Solum, Should We Be Originalistsl, in ROBERT W. BENNETT & LAWRENCE B. SOLUM, CONSTITUTIONAL ORIGINALISM 36-63 (2011).
121. For a recent discussion of formalist and realist approaches to stare decisis, see Lawrence B. Solum, How NFIB v. Sebelius Affects the Constitutional Gestalt, 91 WASH. U. L. REV. 1 (2013).
122. See Jules Coleman, The Architecture of Jurisprudence, 121 YALE LJ. 2, 46-47 (2011).