How important can the meaning of a single word be? In an upcoming Supreme Court case, the interpretation could affect the length of thousands of prison sentences handed down each year.

It’s hard to imagine a less contentious or more innocent word than “and.”

But how to interpret that simple conjunction has prompted a complicated legal fight that lands in the Supreme Court on Oct. 2, the first day of its new term. What the justices decide could affect thousands of prison sentences each year.

Federal courts across the country disagree about whether the word, as it is used in a bipartisan 2018 criminal justice overhaul, indeed means “and” or whether it means “or.” Even an appellate panel that upheld a longer sentence called the structure of the provision “perplexing.”

The Supreme Court has stepped in to settle the dispute.

It’s the kind of task the justices — and maybe their English teachers — love. The case requires the close parsing of a part of a federal statute, the First Step Act, which aimed in part to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and give judges more discretion.

  • quindraco@lemm.ee
    232·
    1 year ago

    Congress has never, not once in its history, written a law that did not abuse the English language. Case in point: the unparseable Second Amendment.

    • AmberPrince@kbin.social
      287·
      1 year ago

      What do you mean? The second Ammendment says “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That’s all there is to it. There isn’t any other part of that Ammendment. It doesn’t have a single other word as a part of it. Don’t look it up.

        • bobman@unilem.org
          11·
          1 year ago

          The American militia was made up of ‘minutemen’ who could be ready for battle on a moment’s notice.

          This was just normal Americans with guns that decided to fight the british when it was possible.

          The same thing applies to normal gun owners now, although their effectiveness against a state military isn’t going to be nearly as much as before.

      • MNByChoice
        85·
        1 year ago

        It is worse than that. (I assume you are kidding, but only about the first part.)(I assume this because I have heard this joke from others.)

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

        There are several versions of the text of the Second Amendment, each with capitalization or punctuation differences. Differences exist between the version passed by Congress and put on display and the versions ratified by the states.[24][25][26][27] These differences have been a focus of debate regarding the meaning of the amendment, particularly regarding the importance of what the courts have called the prefatory clause.[28][29]

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’ve always said that the only part of the Constitution the right really cares about is the second half of the Second Amendment.