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Section 7

Citation
Section 7
Parent Document
Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020)
Effective Date
2020-06-15
Original Source
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4760997/bostock-v-clayton-county/ ↗

Other Sections in This Document (1015)

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Justice Scalia explained the extraordinary importance of hewing to the ordinary meaning of a phrase: "Adhering to the fair meaning of the text (the textualist's touchstone) does not limit one to the hyperliteral meaning of each word in the text. In the words of Learned Hand: 'a sterile literalism ... loses sight of the forest for the trees.' The full body of a text contains implications that can alter the literal meaning of individual words." A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law 356 (2012) (footnote omitted). Put another way, "the meaning of a sentence may be more than that of the separate words, as a melody is more than the notes." Helvering v. Gregory , 69 F.2d 809, 810-811 (CA2 1934) (L. Hand, J.). Judges must take care to follow ordinary meaning "when two words combine to produce a meaning that is not the mechanical composition of the two words separately." Eskridge, Interpreting Law, at 62. Dictionaries are not "always useful for determining the ordinary meaning of word clusters (like 'driving a vehicle') or phrases and clauses or entire sentences." Id. , at 44. And we must recognize that a phrase can cover a "dramatically smaller category than either component term." Id., at 62.