2024 Legal Opinions
Court Opinion | SNAP INC. v. Vidal
SNAP INC. v. Vidal, Dist. Court, CD California 2024
Owner of social media application Snapchat, Snap Inc. seeks to register “SPECTACLES” as a trademark for their eye-wearable technology. As a foundation for their argument, Snap’s corpus linguistics expert, Dr. Robert Leonard, shows that the public understands “spectacles” to signify eyewear generally. He shows this through searches in the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (“COCA”), and Google Ngram Viewer.
Court Opinion | Freeman v. DEEBS-ELKENANEY
Freeman v. DEEBS-ELKENANEY, Dist. Court, SD New York 2024
In this opinion, both parties of a copyright infringement case request that the court exclude certain expert witnesses. One of the expert witnesses in question is Dr. Patrick Juola, a forensic linguist and computer science professor. As part of a stylometric, or “authorship attribution”, analysis, Juola uses The Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English (“Brown Corpus”). He uses the Brown Corpus to establish the rarity of the cluster of letters “katm”, but the Court finds issues with Juola’s report and excludes it. This case is noteworthy because a linguistic corpus is used in stylometric analysis.
Court Opinion | State v. Wilson
State v. Wilson, 543 P.3d 440 (Haw. 2024).
Wilson, charged with violation of the Hawai’i State Constitution for carrying an unlicensed firearm, argues that the Hawai’i State Constitution is out of line with the United States Constitution’s 2nd Amendment. Quoting previous linguistic analysis, the Court argues that a right to “bear arms” almost exclusively refers to the right to do so in a collective, military rather than a personal use sense. This case shows how previous corpus analyses, such as analysis of the right to “bear arms” continue to be relevant.
Court Opinion | United States v. Boler
United States v. Boler, 115 F. 4th 316 – Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit 2024
Boler, sentenced to 30 months in prison for tax and loan fraud, attempts to appeal the sentence. In calculating the sentence, the word “loss” becomes significant and eventually corpus searches are used. As context for the court, corpus linguistics is defined as a tool that “clarifies a term’s meaning by studying the term’s use across specified time periods and origins.”; arguments against corpus linguistics, such as the concern that it ignores context, are addressed. Additionally, it is acknowledged that corpus linguistics compliments rather than rivals “text, structure, purpose or history” in court considerations and the use of dictionaries is questioned on the same grounds as concerns about corpus linguistics.
Court Opinion | Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs v. Birmingham
Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs v. Birmingham No. (D. Vt. 2024).
Certain Vermont corporations affiliated with gun ownership and several Vermont residents argue that Vermont statute requiring a background check or expiration of a waiting period before transfer of guns is unconstitutional. As part of the case, understanding the scope of the term “arms” in the second amendment is addressed by expert witness Professor Dennis Baron. Using linguistic analysis, Dr. Baron testifies that during the Founding and Reconstruction Eras, the word “arms” refers to firearms specifically because broader phrases like “arms and accoutrements” are used during those times.
Court Opinion | Leebcor Services, LLC v. United States
Leebcor Services, LLC v. United States No. (Fed. Cl. 2024).
Leebcor, contracted to design and build a special tactics building by The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), argues that their contract was breached when the USACE required the addition of extra force protection measures. The question becomes one of jurisdiction in § 1500 and the answer lies in the meaning of the word “process”. The Court uses the Corpus of American English (COHA) to analyze historical uses of “process”—such as when it appears within four words of “legal”.
Court Opinion | Delligatti v. United States
Delligatti v. United States No. (U.S. 2025)
Delligatti, charged with second-degree murder, attempts to argue that “that murder is not a crime of violence”. In response, a corpus search from The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) for the phrase “use of physical force” is referenced—a search from the previous United States v. Scott. It is also noted that using linguistic corpora can aid in understanding of how ordinary people understand statutory terms.
Court Opinion | United States v. Robinson
United States v. Robinson
No. 22-4588 (4th Cir. Feb. 13, 2024).
Corpus linguistics is used to support an interpretation of “strangulation” in this recent court opinion.