Jennifer Mascott on Textual Interpretation for US Circuit Judge Nominee

Judicial Role and Textual Interpretation

• 🎯 The judicial role, particularly at the appellate level, is distinguished by the interpretation of statutory or constitutional text.
• 💡 Jennifer Mascott, nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, would approach this by seeking the plain meaning or public understanding of the text.

Methods for Interpreting Text

• 🔍 Interpretation begins with the text itself, considering its words, phrases, and surrounding provisions.
• ⏳ The timing of the meaning is crucial, referring to the enactment date for statutes and ratification date for the Constitution.
• 📚 Background context can be gained from dictionaries, historical usage, and techniques like corpus linguistics to understand common or legal meanings at the time of adoption.
• 🧠 The goal is to ascertain the objective meaning of the text as understood by the public, not the subjective intent of individual lawmakers.

Resolving Ambiguities in Text

• ⚠️ When text is not plain, extensive work is needed to examine the phrase and surrounding context, including dictionaries and other sources.
• ⚖️ Legislative history, such as floor statements or debates, may be considered as one piece of evidence but individual lawmaker intent has no legal impact unless consistent with original public understanding.
• 🏛️ The bicameralism and presentment process, involving Congress and the President, is responsible for enacting text institutionally, not through individual subjective intentions.
• ✅ Mascott emphasizes that it should take significant effort to conclude that text is truly ambiguous.