Today's Broadcast

Topic: Dictionaries and the U.S. Supreme Court

As the U.S. Supreme Court begins its latest term today, we're marking the occasion with a brief look at the role of the dictionary in our nation's highest court.

Thanks to a set of scholarly articles by Samuel Thumma and Jeffrey Kirchmeier, we were able to learn the following: Although Supreme Court justices have been citing dictionaries—general dictionaries, law dictionaries, and foreign dictionaries—since the early 1800s, they have been increasing their reliance on dictionary citations over the past half century.

While we may recall the recent legal wrangling attempting to suss out (or cloud) just what the meaning of 'is' is, is is hardly the only word to face judicial scrutiny. Dictionary reviews of in, or, nor, of, and any also appear in Supreme Court decisions; and dictionaries are featured in decisions trying to clarify terms ranging from abandonment to absinthe, smuggler to anarchist, and obscene to pornography.

So is this reliance on dictionaries a good thing? According to our sources, not necessarily. Their review reveals rich judicial disagreement over which (if any) dictionary might be helpful in understanding the legislative intent of a statute, over just which term needs defining, over just which definition should be relied upon, and over just what the heck it was lexicographers were thinking, anyway. And they make the case that the choice of dictionaries has, at least once, shaped the outcome of a judicial decision.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.