Quotes from Antonin Scalia

that is not just a relative pronoun but also a stand-alone pronoun, a demonstrative adjective, and a conjunction.

Properly speaking, a proviso is a clause that introduces a condition by the word provided.

Another characteristic of Homo hibernicus—I know you would be annoyed if I did not mention it—is quickness of intellect. Now I must admit that on this point you Irish may be better judges of yourselves than an outsider like me would be. Because the Irish have all sorts of ways of seeming to be knowledgeable when they are not. One, of course, is lying.

So unless the text itself is ambiguous, the parol-evidence rule excludes precontractual indications of what the parties thought they were achieving.

It can convert nouns into verbs, and change a description of a panda bear ("Eats shoots and leaves") into a description of Jesse James ("Eats, shoots, and leaves"). No intelligent construction of a text can ignore its punctuation.

In statutory interpretation there is, for example, the rule of lenity, whereby ambiguity in a criminal law is resolved in favor of the defendant; and in interpretation of private contracts there is the rule that ambiguity will be construed contra proferentem, against the party that drafted the instrument.

A traditional and hence anticipated rule of interpretation, no less than a traditional and hence anticipated meaning of a word, imparts meaning.

For example, post can refer to a piece of timber set upright, a position of employment, or mail.

But more often the language is not plain and unambiguous, so that to figure out its meaning, the implicit process of interpretation that we apply to plain and unambiguous language must be made express.

Given a rule of law that [those] conditions generically described as A produce a certain legal liability or other consequence X, does the specific fact or group of facts n fall within the genus A?

conveying two very different senses, as when table could refer either to a piece of furniture or to a numerical chart)

As Justinian's Digest put it: A verbis legis non est recedendum1 ("Do not depart from the words of the law").

Second, the purpose must be defined precisely, and not in a fashion that smuggles in the answer to the question before the decision-maker.

fair reading": determining the application of a governing text to given facts on the basis of how a reasonable reader, fully competent in the language, would have understood the text at the time it was issued. The endeavor requires aptitude in language, sound judgment, the suppression of personal preferences regarding the outcome, and, with older texts, historical linguistic research.

Third, the purpose is to be described as concretely as possible, not abstractly.

British grammarian: "It is clearly desirable that an anaphoric (backward-looking) or cataphoric (forward-looking) pronoun should be placed as near as the construction allows to the noun or noun phrase to which it refers, and in such a manner that there is no risk of ambiguity.

Fourth, except in the rare case of an obvious scrivener's error, purpose—even purpose as most narrowly defined—cannot be used to contradict text or to supplement it.

the serial comma—that is, the comma after the penultimate item in a series and just before the conjunction (a, b, and c). Authorities on English usage overwhelmingly recommend using the serial comma to prevent ambiguities.

A statute limits the time for appeal to 60 days after judgment has been entered: The purpose is to close off appeal, and terminate the litigation, after 60 days. (The purposivist might find it to be closing off appeal after a reasonable time, which is specified as 60 days in normal circumstances—but special cir-cumstances may provide an exception.)

The last-antecedent canon may be superseded by another grammatical convention: A pronoun that is the subject of a sentence and does not have an antecedent in that sentence ordinarily refers to the subject of the preceding sentence. And it almost always does so when it is the word that begins the sentence.

ut res magis valeat quam pereat).

The upshot is that new rights cannot be suddenly "discovered" years later in a document, unless everyone affected by the document had somehow overlooked an applicable provision that was there all along.

Our appointment and confirmation process has, in other words, evolved into a mini-plebiscite on the meaning of the Constitution whenever a new justice is to be seated.

You should be in no doubt that, patriotic conservative that I am, I detest the burning of the nation's flag—and if I were king I would make it a crime. But as I understand the First Amendment, it guarantees the right to express contempt for the government, the Congress, the Supreme Court, even the nation and the nation's flag.