I’ve written a number of briefs that have drawn on ideas and methods from linguistics. The links below will take you to those briefs, or (if you’d prefer) to a short writeup about the case, which will also include links to the brief and other information.
- New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. City of New York (U.S. Supreme Court)
Second Amendment; word & phrase meaning
Brief of Neal Goldfarb as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondent, Arguing that as to the Second Amendment Issue, the Petition Should Be Dismissed as Improvidently Granted.
(brief; see the corpus analysis on which the brief was based here; additional information here)
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar (U.S. Supreme Court)
Title VII retaliation; word meaning.
Amicus brief on behalf of the Washington Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights & Urban Affairs, and of a number or employment litigators.
(brief; see my post on the case here)
- FCC v. AT&T, Inc. (U.S. Supreme Court)
Freedom of Information Act; word meaning.
Amicus brief on behalf of Project On Government Oversight, the Brechner Center on Freedom of Information, and Tax Analysts.
(brief; see my posts about the case here and here)
Coverage: Ben Zimmer in The Atlantic; Language Log
- Flores Figueroa v. United States (U.S. Supreme Court)
Aggravated identity theft; scope of adverbial modification.
Amicus brief on behalf of linguistics professors.
(brief; writeup)
- United States v. Hayes (U.S. Supreme Court)
Misdemeanor crime of domestic violence; various linguistic issues.
Amicus brief on behalf of professors of linguistics and cognitive science.
(brief; writeup on the way)
- Rodearmel v. Clinton (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; special 3-judge court)
Eligibility of Hilary Clinton to serve as Secretary of State; the semantics of the future perfect tense.
Amicus brief on behalf of linguistics professors.
(brief; writeup on the way)
- Sherley v. Sebelius (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia)
Federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research; the interpretation of the phrase, “research in which a human embryo or embryos is killed [or] discarded.”
Amicus brief on behalf of the Genetics Policy Institute.
(brief; see my posts on the case: Introduction, The meaning of “research”, The statute’s use of the present tense)