Private Law Theory

Introduction
… This Comment advocates the theory that Twitter can be used as a corpus to assist judges in determining the ordinary meaning of language. Part II will give an overview of corpus linguistics and how it helps fill gaps left open by traditional tools of statutory interpretation, such as dictionaries. It will then explain how Twitter works, how other corpora previously used by judges work, and how Twitter compares to these corpora. Part III will directly analyze Twitter’s potential as an adjudicatory linguistic corpus by examining how it has been used as a corpus in academia and by illustrating how it could function as a corpus in an actual statutory interpretation case. Part IV will discuss realistic expectations for Twitter’s use as a corpus by courts …

Lauren Simpson, #OrdinaryMeaning: Using Twitter as a Corpus in Statutory Analysis, Brigham Young University Law Review 487 (2017).

First posted 2017-11-27 10:31:35