Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2011
Abstract
Is plain meaning so plain? This is not meant to be a philosophical question, but one deserving serious legal analysis. The plain-meaning rule claims to provide certainty and narrow statutes' domains. The author agrees with, as a relative claim, comparing plain meaning with purposivism. She does not agree that plain-meaning analysis is as easy as its proponents suggest. In this piece, the author teases out two very different ideas of plain meaning--ordinary/popular meaning and expansive/legalist meaning--suggesting that doctrinal analysis requires more than plain-meaning simpliciter. Perhaps more importantly, she argues that plain meaning, as legalist meaning, can quite easily expand a statute's scope, relative to a baseline of ordinary meaning or the status quo ex ante.
Publication Citation
76 Brook. L. Rev. 997-1005 (2011)
Scholarly Commons Citation
Nourse, Victoria, "Two Kinds of Plain Meaning" (2011). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 991.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/991