Speaking of the Appellate Body, which is known for (among other things) its use of dictionaries, here's an interesting NY Times piece on the U.S. Supreme Court's increasing use of dictionaries:
In a decision last week in a patent case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. puzzled out the meaning of a federal law by consulting the usual legal materials — and five dictionaries.
One of the words he looked up was “of.” He learned that it means pretty much what you think it means.
In May alone, the justices cited dictionaries in eight cases to determine what legislators had meant when they used words like “prevent,” “delay” and “report.” Over the years, justices have looked up both perfectly ordinary words (“now,” “also,” “any,” “if”) and ones you might think they would know better than the next guy (“attorney,” “common law”).
All of this is, lexicographers say, sort of strange.
“I think that it’s probably wrong, in almost all situations, to use a dictionary in the courtroom,” said Jesse Sheidlower, the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. “Dictionary definitions are written with a lot of things in mind, but rigorously circumscribing the exact meanings and connotations of terms is not usually one of them.”
...
In the last two decades, the use of dictionaries at the Supreme Court has been booming.
A new study in The Marquette Law Review found that the justices had used dictionaries to define 295 words or phrases in 225 opinions in the 10 years starting in October 2000. That is roughly in line with the previous decade but an explosion by historical standards. In the 1960s, for instance, the court relied on dictionaries to define 23 terms in 16 opinions.
...
The authors of the Marquette study, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier and Samuel A. Thumma, said the justices had never really said precisely what dictionary definitions were doing in legal opinions. They urged the justices to explain “when and how dictionaries should be used, how a specific dictionary should be chosen and how to use a dictionary for interpretation.”
The justices have cited more than 120 dictionaries, which is suggestive of cherry picking.
“It’s easy to stack the deck by finding a definition that does or does not highlight a nuance that you’re interested in,” said Mr. Sheidlower, the O.E.D. editor.
Perhaps those interviewing the soon to be nominated Appellate Body candidates will raise this issue with them.
Also, if anyone is looking for something to research, a study of the Appellate Body's use of dictionaries over the years could be interesting.
