{"id":8026,"date":"2009-11-16T23:20:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T04:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=8026"},"modified":"2009-11-17T08:28:28","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T13:28:28","slug":"ambiguity-is-ambiguous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/11\/ambiguity-is-ambiguous\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambiguity Is Ambiguous"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier post<\/a>, I offered some preliminary thoughts about the Supreme Court’s six criminal statutory interpretation cases last term.\u00a0 I observed that Justice Scalia’s textualist approach now seems dominant on the Court.\u00a0 The six opinions thus reflect a great deal of effort to parse the texts of the statutes, and we get a number of passages like this one from Flores-Figueroa v. United States<\/em>, 129 S. Ct. 1886, 1890 (2009):<\/p>\n

In ordinary English, where a transitive verb has an object, listeners in most contexts assume that an adverb (such as knowingly) that modifies the transitive verb tells the listener how the subject performed the entire action, including the object as set forth in the sentence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stirring prose, no?\u00a0 One would hardly guess that two years of a man’s life were riding on this\u00a0characterization of an obscure grammatical norm.\u00a0 Whatever else might be said for or against textualism, it does lead to opinions in which there is sometimes a disconcerting disconnect between the Court’s dry rhetoric and the human realities of crime and punishment.<\/p>\n

In keeping with the Court’s current textualism, comparatively little attention is paid in the six opinions to legislative history, which is either ignored altogether or wheeled out as an apparent afterthought.<\/p>\n

Of course, even textualists like Scalia acknowledge that texts are sometimes ambiguous.\u00a0 In such circumstances, rather than resort to legislative history or policy considerations, textualists will look to the traditional canons of statutory construction.\u00a0 One of these is the rule of lenity, which indicates that ambiguous criminal statutes should be interpreted in favor of the defendant.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

For instance, in the previous term, the Court (through a plurality opinion authored by Scalia) invoked the rule of lenity as a basis to interpret the federal money-laundering statute narrowly.\u00a0 (I posted on the case, United States v. Santos<\/em>, 128 S. Ct. 2020 (2008), here<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the rule of lenity did not fare so well last term.\u00a0 In its pro-government decisions, the Court’s majorities\u00a0summarily rejected defendants’ (and dissenters’) arguments that statutes were ambiguous, while the authors of its pro-defendant decisions apparently felt it unnecessary to invoke lenity.\u00a0 This\u00a0pattern\u00a0is odd, for each case featured colorable textual arguments on both sides — this would seem good prima facie evidence of ambiguity.\u00a0 However, as the Court explained in Dean v. United States, <\/em>129 S. Ct. 1849, 1856 (2009):<\/p>\n

The simple existence of some statutory ambiguity, however, is not sufficient to warrant application of that rule, for most statutes are ambiguous to some degree.\u00a0 To invoke the rule, we must conclude that there is a grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the statute.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One wonders\u00a0where exactly the line is between simple ambiguity and “grievous ambiguity.”\u00a0 The Court’s opinions provide no clue.\u00a0 Simply put, the ambiguity standard itself suffers from ambiguity.\u00a0 This is, of course, in considerable tension with the whole textualist project, which aimed to bring greater objectivity and determinacy to statutory interpretation than could be provided by intentionalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an earlier post, I offered some preliminary thoughts about the Supreme Court’s six criminal statutory interpretation cases last term.\u00a0 I observed that Justice Scalia’s textualist approach now seems dominant on the Court.\u00a0 The six opinions thus reflect a great deal of effort to parse the texts of the statutes, and we get a number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}