The original meaning of "cases" in Article III of the US Constitution
Haoshan Ren, Margaret Wood, Clark D. Cunningham, Noor Abbady, Ute Römer, Heather Kuhn & Jesse Egbert, “Questions Involving National Peace and Harmony” or “Injured Plaintiff Litigation”?
The Original Meaning of “Cases” in Article III of the Constitution, 36 Georgia State Law Review (forthcoming 2020)
Presented Friday, October 18, 2019
Georgia State University Workshop on Law & Linguistics
-Results of linguistic research and other materials cited in amicus briefs of the Law & Linguistics Research Team in Wright v Spaulding and in “Questions Involving National Peace and Harmony” or “Injured Plaintiff Litigation”?
The Original Meaning of “Cases” in Article III of the Constitution
-- Excerpt of 35 cases of the phrase "such other + noun" taken from a random sample search of the Corpus of Founding Era American English. (These cases represent all the examples from the random sample drawn from either Founders Online or Evans Early Imprint. These sources were selected for the excerpt because of the ease of viewing the full text through the URL provided in each line.)
-- Additional random sample search results for "such other + noun". Examples where the relationship between nouns in the "such other" pattern may be difficult to discern are highlighted and annotated
---- Analysis of additional random samples
---- Random Sample A (100 examples)
-----Random Sample B (100 examples)
-----Random Sample C (100 examples)
--- Tables showing high frequency patterns for using "case" and "cases" in the papers of James Madison
--- Examples of "cases" used as shell noun in Madison papers
--"cases arising" and "cases affecting" phrases found in COFEA excluding references to Article III
-- "cases of" phrases found in COFEA
---- Excluded examples from Hein Online
---- Randomized spreadsheet of 335 remaining examples
-----Random Sample 1
-----Random Sample 2
---- Random Sample 3
Articles of Confederation - case highlighted
Virginia Constitution of 1776 - case highlighted
Massachusetts Constitution of 1780
- case highlighted
Image of Madison's Notes, Constitutional Convention (Madison's objection to adding "cases arising under the constitution")
William Andrew Wright v. Stephen Spaulding, Warden (on appeal from N.D. Ohio) (6th Cir. Case 17-4257) (Judges Amul R. Thapar, Joseph Martin Hood & Eugene Edward Siler)
Letter from the court to lawyers for the parties requesting supplemental briefs on original meaning of the Article III Cases or Controversies requirement (May 28, 2019) (asking "How does the corpus help inform that determination? See https://lcl.byu.edu/projects/cofea/.").
Respondent's Motion to extend time (June 4, 2019)
Appearance of Joshua K. Handell, US Dept of Justice, for Respondent (June 5, 2019)
Order granting motion to extend time until July 18, 2019, for parties to file supplemental briefs (June 6, 2019)
Petitioner's Supplemental Brief (July 18, 2019)
Respondent's Supplemental Brief (July 18, 2019)
Amicus appearance filed for Law & Linguistics Research Team (July 25, 2019)
Motion to file amicus brief (July 25, 2019)
Amicus brief filed by Law & Linguistics Research Team (July 25, 2019)
-- Excerpt of 35 cases of the phrase "such other + noun" taken from a random sample search of the Corpus of Founding Era American English. (These cases represent all the examples from the random sample drawn from either Founders Online or Evans Early Imprint. These sources were selected for the excerpt because of the ease of viewing the full text through the URL provided in each line.)
Order granting motion to file amicus brief and directing the amici to file a further supplemental brief no later than August 15, 2019 (August 2, 2019)
Supplemental amicus brief filed by Law & Linguistics Research Team (August 22, 2019)
Decision (September 19, 2019) (Opinion by Judge Amul R. Thapar for the court affirming denial of habeas petition ) ("We asked the parties to file supplemental briefs on the original meaning of Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement, specifically whether the corpus of Founding-era American English helped illuminate that meaning. A team of corpus linguistics researchers submitted two amicus briefs as well. We are grateful to both the parties and the amici for their hard work. Here, we agree with the parties that corpus linguistics turned out not to be the most helpful tool in the toolkit.)