All Legal Opinions
Court Opinion | Garibay v. Johnson
Garibay v. Johnson No. (Ariz. 2025)
Corpus tools are used to determine the meaning of the term “misconduct” in questioning whether Constable Garibay was liable under § 11-449. Chief Justice Timmer notes that, “we should not treat corpus linguistics as a settled part of our interpretive toolkit but instead view it as an intriguing possible tool and invite adversarial testing of that tool.”
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.
Court Opinion | Margda Pierre-Noel v. Bridges Public Charter School
MARGDA PIERRE-NOEL v. BRIDGES PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL
No. 1:23-cv-00070 (TNM).
United States District Court, District of Columbia.
April 6, 2023.
Pierre-Noel, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”), seeks for accommodations to be made for her disabled son to be ensured transportation to school. The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) is used to determine the meaning of “transportation” within the context of the provision’s creation. It is noted that “Although dictionaries, regulations, and other statutes provide a useful starting point,” words must be seen in context, and corpus linguistics is just the tool for that.
Court Opinion | Taylor v. Nicholson-Williams, Inc.
Taylor v. Nicholson-Williams, Inc.
368 So. 3d 1007 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2023).
Corpus linguistics is noted as a tool to offer more probative evidence of what statutory language meant to the public at the time of enactment.
Court Opinion | Cargill v. Garland
Cargill v. Garland
57 F.4th 447 (5th Cir. 2023).
Cargill, having surrendered several bump stocks to the Government, challenges the legality of that action law under current national regulations. The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and News on the Web Corpus (NOW Corpus) are used to analyze “function of the trigger,” and related phrases in order to analyze Cargill’s claims. In response, it is argued that tools like corpora are useless in cases of statutory lexical ambiguity and that, “ambiguous statutes are always grievously ambiguous.”
Court Opinion | New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn, Inc. v. Bruen
New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 US 1 – Supreme Court 2022
New York residents Koch and Nash, applying for unrestricted licenses to carry a handgun in public, fail because they are seen as not meeting the “proper cause” requirement of New York laws; alongside the NRA, they sue the NYPD Chief, Kevin Bruen. Reference is made to District of Columbia v. Heller where “bear arms” as in a “right to bear arms” was interpreted as only having a literal meaning. This interpretation is challenged as corpus analyses after the case showed that “bear arms” did seem to have an idiomatic meaning at that time.
Court Opinion | United States v. Rice
United States v. Rice
36 F.4th 578 (4th Cir. 2022).
Rice argues that assault by strangulation is not a “crime of violence” and a categorical approach is taken in classifying Rice’s offense. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (“COCA”) is determined to be a relevant tool in gauging the level of understanding of the “ordinary speaker” of English and the term “strangulation” is searched. It is noted that, “Although relatively new, corpus linguistics is gaining traction as an interpretive tool.”
Court Opinion | Jones v. Bonta
Jones v. Bonta
34 F.4th 704 (9th Cir. 2022).
Thought corpus linguistics isn’t ultimately applied to the case, it is noted as a powerful tool.
Court Opinion | United States v. Carson
United States v. Carson
55 F.4th 1053 (6th Cir. 2022).
Carson, having previously robbed a bank and incarcerated, argues that the district court violated his judgement and repayment agreement’s terms. The term “substantial” becomes of interest in regards to Carson’s prison wages which were used to repay his debt. Searches for “substantial” in COCA (BYU’s Corpus of Contemporary American English) are used to understand its meaning; results associate “substantial” with several other adjectives used to argue for Carson.
Court Opinion | Fulkerson v. Unum Life Insurance Company of America
Fulkerson v. UNUM LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA
No (6th Cir. June 3, 2022).
Fulkerson, whose son passed away in a reckless driving car accident, is challenged by his insurance company because of her claiming accidental death benefits; Fulkerson appeals. The phrase “reckless driving” is searched in COCA to argue that “reckless driving” is “illegal act for which one can be punished by law” and therefore a “crime”, thus triggering the insurance’s crime exclusion in his life insurance policy.
Court Opinion | Matthews v. The Industrial Commission of Arizona
Matthews v. The Industrial Commission of Arizona
No. CV-21-0192-PR (Ariz. Nov. 23, 2022).
Matthews, a retired police detective, seeks workers compensation for PTSD acquired while working for the Tucson police department. To interpret the meaning of “injury” as understood in the Arizona state constitution, a dictionary definition and COHA (Corpus of Historical American English) are used in tandem to argue against Matthews that stress-related illness would not have been considered injury at the time of the adoption of the state constitution.
Court Opinion | Gulf Shores City Board of Education v. Mackey
GULF SHORES CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION v. Mackey
No. 1210353 (Ala. Dec. 22, 2022).
This case does not include the direct use of corpus linguistics, but Alabama’s Justice Mitchell closes by remarking on the usefulness of corpus linguistics in future cases, even inviting future parties who will appear before the Court to use corpus linguistics analyses to wrestle with original public meaning. He states, “Corpus linguistics will often serve only as a method to ‘check our work’ and confirm the results of the underlying textual analysis, “but ‘[i]n future cases where the ordinary meaning is debatable, … the results [of a corpus-linguistics analysis] could be determinative.”
Court Opinion | Rouch World v. Department of Civil Rights
ROUCH WORLD v. DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL RIGHTS
987 N.W.2d 501, 510 Mich. 398 (2022).
Rouch World, accused of violating the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (“ELCRA”) on the grounds of sex-based discrimination, seeks to appeal claims against them. The question becomes whether discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is considered discrimination “because of … sex,” according to the ELCRA. Searches are performed on COHA (Corpus of Historical American English) to argue that the public at that time would have understood discrimination because of sex to be based on an individual’s sex rather than sexual orientation.
Court Opinion | State v. Carter
State v. Carter
504 P.3d 179, 2022 U.T. App 9 (Utah Ct. App. 2022).
Carter appeals his conviction for aggravated arson, asserting that his original trial counsel provided ineffective assistance. Carter uses dictionaries and corpus linguistics tools to contend that a “habitable structure” refers to a structure’s current rather than intended use; but, the court determines this analysis to be irrelevant to Carter’s claims, stating, “we have no occasion to undertake such a thorough analysis and interpretation of the true meaning of the admittedly confusing statutory scheme.”
Court Opinion | Health Freedom Defense Fund Inc. v. Biden
Health Freedom Defense Fund, Inc. v. Biden
599 F. Supp. 3d 1144 (M.D. Fla. 2022).
In response to the COVID-19 mask mandate, Pope, Daza, and the Health Freedom Defense Fund sue various government officials and the CDC, declaring it unlawful and requesting that it be set aside. To address this, the word “sanitation” becomes of interest and the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) is used to search this term’s use between 1930 and 1944. Corpus linguistics is described in the case as, “A search returns the desired word as well as its context and, with a sufficient sample size, search results permit inferences on how a word was used.”
Court Opinion | United States v. Seefried
United States v. SEEFRIED
No. 21-cr-287 (TNM) (D.C. Oct. 31, 2022).
Seefried, a rioter from the January 6 United States Capitol Riot, faces the reality of a prison sentence. Understanding these three words, “administration of justice” determines the difference between a two and six year sentence. Because sentencing guidelines’ primary linguistic community is mostly an informed legal community, our own Caselaw Access Project (“COCAP”) is searched alongside the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) to understand “administration of justice”.
Court Opinion | Kudos Inc. v. Kudoboard LLC
KUDOS INC. v. KUDOBOARD LLC
No. 20-cv-01876-SI (N.D. Cal. Nov. 20, 2021).
In this case, Kudos Inc. challenges Kudoboard LLC over a trademark dispute and the term “kudos”. Multiple corpora and web sources are searched for the use of this term, i.e., COHA, COCA, iWeb, and GloWbE corpora; texts collected from Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook; a corpus created by Dr. William Eggington of employee recognition programs. Kudoboard uses this evidence to defend their claim that “kudos” is a generic term, unassociated with a specific third party.
Court Opinion | United States v. Scott
United States v. Scott, 990 F.3d 94 (2d Cir. 2021)
990 F.3d 94 (2d Cir. 2021).
Scott, standing twice convicted of first-degree murder in New York State under state penal laws, faces the issue of whether Scott’s manslaughter convictions count as violent crimes. To answer this question, the meaning of the word “use” becomes important to define. The interpretation of the word “use” in Smith v. United States, based on frequently cited dictionaries, is faulted and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary English) is used as evidence of its failure to identify the ordinary meaning of “use”.
Court Brief | State v. Misch
State v. Misch, 256 A.3d 519, 2021 VT 10 (Vt. 2021)
Vermont’s ban on large-capacity gun magazines is argued to violate the right to bear arms under the Vermont Constitution by Misch. This is done in order to defend Misch’s carrying of these magazines, but the motion to dismiss charges against him is denied by the court. Studies using COFEA (Corpus of Founding Era American English) , BYU-COEME (Corpus of Early American English), and the Google Books database to determine the meaning of “bear arms” are cited.
Court Opinion | State v. Burke
State v. Burke, 462 P.3d 599, 166 Idaho 621 (2020)
Burke, sentenced to time in the Idaho State mental hospital, seeks credit for his 56 days spent in the court-ordered commitment and defining the word “incarceration” is key to the decision. In this case, corpus linguistics is not used in decision making; yet, Justice Bevan urges the court to use corpus linguistics searches in future cases. He demonstrates its usefulness with a search from COHA (Corpus of Historical American English) for the word “incarceration” and contrasts it with the method of “simply turning to a dictionary to reach a desired result.”
Court Opinion | US v. Woodson
United States v. Woodson, 960 F.3d 852 (6th Cir. 2020)
Woodson, challenging a sentence enhancement for his interstate diamond robberies, argues that he did not “relocate” while committing his crimes; rather, Toledo, Ohio was his scheme’s home base. He argues this because relocation would constitute grounds for enhancing his sentence, but COCA (Corpus of American English) provides compelling evidence against him. The particular law that would justify an enhancement requires a relocation of a “fraudulent scheme” and COCA reveals that “scheme”, in ordinary speech, does not generally refer to a tangible hideout, but concepts, plans, and criminal enterprises instead.
Court Opinion | Salt Lake City Corp. v. Haik
Salt Lake City Corp. v. Haik
466 P.3d 178, 2020 U.T. 29 (Utah 2020).
This case addresses a dispute over whether Salt Lake City is required to supply water to certain land owners outside of the City’s limits, but still within their water-service area. All said, the Court declines to use the corpus linguistics analysis in their decision; nonetheless, they outline suggestions for how corpus linguistics should be used in future cases. They first suggest that “parties should limit their inquiry to the relevant time period” and second, that parties should “thoroughly examine” search results and provide “a meaningful analysis” of those results.
Amicus Brief | Salgado v. United States
Salgado v. United States
Brief for the Cato Institute as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners, Salgado v. United States, case citation (No. 19-659).
In this brief, the Cato Institute argues that interpreting the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (“CAFRA”) according to “ordinary usage” of the terms therein is the best interpretation because the Act affects “ordinary citizens”—many of whom have trouble finding legal representation. To understand the meaning of the term “substantially prevails” in CAFRA, they combine analyses of a search for “substantial” in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (“COCA”) with common-sense intuitions, and dictionary definitions.
Amicus Brief | Wright v. Spaulding
Wright v Spaulding
Brief for Law and Linguistics Research Team on Behalf of Neither Party, Wright v. Spaulding, No. 17-4257 (6th Cir. 2019).
A team of scholars referred to as the “Law & Linguistics Research Team” use the Corpus of Founding Era American English (“COFEA”) to investigate the meaning of the term “cases” in Article III of the United States Constitution as the original public would have understood it. Using specific corpus evidence, they argue that the current interpretation of the term “cases” used in Article III may be a narrower definition than it was originally intended.
Supplemental Brief
Court Opinion | Richards v. Cox
Richards v. Cox
2019 UT 57, 450 P.3d 1074, 1079-81 (Utah 2019) (Supreme Court of Utah September 13, 2019).
This case addresses the issue of whether Senate Bill 78 (“SB 78”), making the Utah State Board of Education’s elections partisan, violates the Utah State Constitution; the state constitution prohibits religious or partisan qualifications for employment in the state’s education system. Using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (“COCA”), the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) the phrase “employment in” was searched and along with other interpretive tools, it is determined that the Utah Board of Education is not part of “state’s education systems.”
Court Opinion | State v. Lantis
State v. Lantis
447 P.3d 875, 880-81 (Idaho 2019) (Supreme Court of Idaho Aug. 23, 2019).
Lantis, who sent sexually suggestive images of his ex-girlfriend to her employer in an attempt to get her fired, faces charges of misdemeanor for “disturbing the peace”. To understand the meaning of “disturbing the peace”, the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) is used as additional support for other modes of statutory interpretation. It is noted that the Corpus of Founding Era American English (“COFEA”) could have been used, but because corpora should be relevant to the specific time period in question, COHA was chosen.
Court Opinion | Caesars Entertainment Corp. v. Int’l Union of Operating Engineers
Caesars Entertainment Corporation v. International Union of Operating Engineers Local 68 Pension Fund
932 F.3d 91, 95 (3rd Cir. 2019)
As part of a bargaining agreement, Appellee Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“CEC”) agreed to contribute to the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 68 Pension Fund, (“the Fund”). After closing one of their casinos, CEC decreased their contribution to the Fund and CEC is now challenged under Congress’ Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act (“MPPAA”) of 1980, which imposes liability on CEC for decreasing their contributions to the Fund. To determine the extent of CEC’s liability, the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) used to analyze the word “previous” around the time of the MPPAA’s enactment.
Court Opinion | Wilson v. Safelite
Wilson v. Safelite Group, Inc.
930 F.3d 429 (6th Cir. 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring).
Wilson, former president and CFO Safelite Group Inc., sues Safelite for breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation as a result of alleged mismanagement of its deferred compensation plan for executive employees. To determine whether Wilson’s claims are founded, the phrase “results in a deferral of income by employees for periods extending to the termination of covered employment or beyond” from 29 U.S.C. § 1002(2)(A)(ii) is analyzed. Judge Thapar uses the Corpus of Historical American English (“COHA”) to establish a lack of evidence for interpreting the phrasal verb “results in” to mean “requires”, supporting earlier decisions. Notably, Judge Thapar speaks of corpus linguistics, remarking that “Courts should consider adding this tool to their belts.” and concedes that it “is one tool … but not the whole toolbox.”
Amicus Brief | Rimini St., Inc. v. Oracle U.S., Inc.
Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc.
Court Opinion | Carpenter v. United States
Carpenter v. United States
138 S.Ct. 2206, 2235, 2238-39 (2018) (Thomas, J., dissenting).
first mention of Law & Corpus Linguistics in SCOTUS; Justice Thomas’ dissent and citation makes reference to corpus linguistic sources, including COFEA (Corpus of Founding Era American-english)
Court Opinion | Fire Ins. Exch. v. Oltmanns
Fire Insurance Exchange v. Oltmanns
416 P.3d 1148, 1163 n.9 (Utah 2018) (Durham, J., concurring).
Court Opinion | People v. Harris
People v. Harris
885 N.W.2d 832 (Mich. 2016).
majority opinion arguing for corpus linguistics and the use of COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American-english) in deciding whether “information” includes the notion of false statements
Court Opinion | State v. Rasabout
State v. Rasabout
356 P.3d 1258, 1271-90 (Utah 2015) (Lee, A.C.J., concurring).
Justice Lee asserts the need for tools like corpus linguistics in the face of competing definitions of “discharge” in relation to a firearm
Court Opinion | In re the Adoption of Baby E.Z.
In the Matter of the Adoption of Baby E.Z.
266 P.3d 702, 715-32 (Utah 2011) (Lee, J., concurring)
In making a precise judgement about the circular definition of custody determination, corpus linguistics makes its first appearance in a court opinion
Amicus Brief | FCC v. AT&T Inc.
Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T Inc. et al.
Brief for the Project on Government Oversight, the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, and Tax Analysis as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioners, FCC v. AT&T Inc., 562 U.S. 397 (2011) (No. 09-1279).