Reading Law

Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner. Thomson/West, 2012. $69.93 new, $43.27 used, and Kindle edition at Amazon.com.

As they say on the Internet, IANAL. I am not a lawyer. So what am I, a non-lawyer, doing reviewing a book on reading legal texts? A book that might well be a law school text or part of an attorney's continuing legal education?

Others involved in the legal process should also be interested in this book. Legislators, clerks of court, paralegals, and others who draft or read legal instruments should know something of how jurists will interpret them. This goes beyond lawyers: Wyoming has the good sense to have a citizen legislature with ranchers and nurses among its members. You don't have to be a lawyer to draw up a contract: real estate agents draw up sales contracts all the time. People make agreements routinely; those may come before a judge if there is a disagreement.

We all, lawyers and non-lawyers, live under the laws. And we are stuck with the results of how jurists construe legal texts. So it behooves us to know something of how they do it. And Americans all live under the U.S. and (with some exceptions) state constitutions. Those, too, are legal instruments, subject to interpretation.

And writers. Writers of any sort of text can use a lesson in writing clearly. Take a lesson from those who read texts for a living.

Antonin Scalia is the senior Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Bryan A. Garner has written more than 20 books, and contributed to others, such as Black's Law Dictionary and The Chicago Manual of Style, both well known to lawyers and writers, respectively. Both authors are highly respected in their respective professions.

There are schools of thought on the interpretation of legal tests. One is the Living Constitution theory, another the Strict Construction school. The book argues persuasively for textualism. In brief, textualism, or "fair reading", says that when interpreting a legal text the interpreter uses the text itself, and the language of the day in which it was passed. The authors make their arguments against other schools. Conservatives in particular should note that there is a difference between Strict Construction and textualism.

The book is largely stated as a series of principles, or canons, of reading legal texts. In this it carries on in the tradition of the medieval legal maxims. For all texts, the canons are divided into fundamental principles, semantic canons, and contextual canons. For legal texts, the authors also give us expected-meaning canons, government structuring canons, private right canons, and stabilizing canons. Finally, we have thirteen falsities exposed.

You've probably been reading this review (if you even got this far), saying, yeah, right, I'm going to read a 700 page legal text book – NOT!I agree. You don't have to. To get a lot out of this book, get the basic concepts: read the Introduction, and the prefatory remarks in each of the sections. Read the chapter headings, one sentence summary and opening quotation of each chapter. Skim at will. Then go back and re-read the flood control case on the first page of the Introduction and the authors' resolution on page 44. Leave the rest for later, or specific applications. Then put the book up on your reference shelf.

But don't expect to be bored. The authors present their case with appropriate quotes from centuries of jurisprudence and centuries of writing about jurisprudence. And lively discussion. Appropriate for a book on tools for clear thinking, the writing is clear and concise. It may be thick with legal terms for the non-attorney, but there is a glossary. There are examples aplenty to illustrate each point, drawn from more than five centuries of legal precedent.

I recommend this book.