Canons of Construction in the United States

In the introduction to A Dictionary of Statutory Interpretation, his author, William D. Popkin, explained that “Black’s Law Dictionary tells us little about the canons of construction (“Canon of construction. A rule used in construing legal instruments, esp. contracts and statutes.”), or “legislative intent” (“The design or plan that the legislature had at the time of enacting the statute.”). (1) Ballentine’s Law Dictionary contains no listing at all for “canons of construction,” and provides a vacuous definition of “legislative intent” (“The vital part, heart, soul, and essence of statutory law; the guiding star in the interpretation of a statute.”). (2) These dictionaries
provide little help in understanding the complex issues underlying these definitions, which would enable the reader to decide what is at stake in using either the canons of construction or legislative intent to interpret statutes.

The shortcomings of Black’s and Ballentine’s Dictionaries are apparent when compared to the more complete entry in Arthur Leff ’s legal dictionary ( Arthur A. Leff, a lexicographer and law professor, was the author of an incomplete (only to the letter C) legal dictionary) for “Canons of construction,”which is both more descriptive and unabashedly prescriptive”.

The definition of Arthur Leff was: “Fundamental rules for the interpretation of legal writings both private and public, e.g., the doctrine of ejusdem generis. In fact, any legal system which in theory seeks to figure out the meanings attached to words by their writers, and then carry
out those intentions, i.e., any system in which words are to function as anything but incantations, will find canons of construction deeply unsatisfactory. . . . One may be aided by the theory that they too knew the canons of construction and sought the meaning their applications would bring, but the job commanded of the judges is still to determine
what the draftsmen meant. But in situations where the writers may not even be presumed to know that canons of construction exist, it is hard, with a straight face, to find that they meant the meanings the canons would produce. Hence modern interpretation is far less dependent upon canons of interpretation, i.e., upon a reasonably small number of rules of meaning than on a less structured attempt to figure out what these words might have meant to their users. The canons are now used, or at least ought to be, only when the language is so ambiguous and opaque as to defy understanding, but some decision has to be made. Then the fiction, of “the meaning” may have to be indulged.” (See other definitions of “Canons of construction” in the law dictionary).

Notes

1. Black’s Law Dictionary, pp. 219, 900 (8th ed., 1999).
2. Ballentine, Law Dictionary p. 723 (3d ed., 1969).