{"id":17168,"date":"2024-01-20T16:13:38","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T21:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=17168"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:12:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:12:50","slug":"triangulating-ordinary-meaning","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/submit\/glj-online\/glj-online-vol-112\/triangulating-ordinary-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Triangulating Ordinary Meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Textualism claims to pave a clear path to the determinate \u201cordinary meaning\u201d of statutory language. But textualist Justices disagree about the ordinary meaning of particular statutes. This Essay proposes a new way forward: triangulating ordinary meaning with multiple empirical methods. Specifically, textualists who seek ordinary meaning should in some circumstances consider the possibility of complementing (1) traditional tools\u2014such as dictionaries, linguistic canons, and intuition\u2014with newly available data from (2) corpus linguistics and (3) survey experiments. As a case study, we consider <\/em>Pulsifer v. United States<em>, concerning interpretation of the First Step Act. The Supreme Court will soon decide <\/em>Pulsifer<em>, a decision that likely turns on the Court\u2019s conclusion about ordinary meaning. We present original corpus linguistic and experimental survey studies that bear on this issue. The Essay\u2019s conclusions have concrete implications for <\/em>Pulsifer<em>, a case which could impact the sentences of thousands of drug defendants. This proof of concept also has broader implications for statutory interpretation theory.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2023\/08\/Tobia-et-al.-Final-Review-GLJO-112.pdf\"><em>Triangulating Ordinary Meaning<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Textualism claims to pave a clear path to the determinate \u201cordinary meaning\u201d of statutory language. But textualist Justices disagree about the ordinary meaning of particular statutes. This Essay proposes a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10024,"featured_media":0,"parent":17167,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-17168","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17168"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20534,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17168\/revisions\/20534"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}