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Bryan A. Garner

Antonin Scalia

Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts First Thus Edition

by Antonin Scalia (Author), Bryan A. Garner (Author), Frank H. Easterbrook (Foreword)

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In this groundbreaking book, Scalia and Garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style - with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases. Is a burrito a sandwich? Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you "using a gun" in a drug transaction? The authors grapple with these and dozens of equally curious questions while explaining the most principled,lucid, and reliable techniques for deriving meaning from authoritative texts. Meanwhile, the book takes up some of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence. The authors write with a well-argued point of view that is definitive yet nuanced, straightforward yet sophisticated. - Publisher.

ISBN-10

031427555X
ISBN-13

978-0314275554
Edition

First Thus
Publisher

West Group
Publication date

January 1, 2011
Language

English
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches
Print length

567 pages
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ West Group; First Thus edition (January 1, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 567 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 031427555X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0314275554
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #19,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Jurisprudence (Books)
- #5 in Trial Practice (Books)
- #53 in Law (Books)

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4.8 413 ratings

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Bryan A. Garner
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Bryan A. Garner (born Nov. 17, 1958) is an American lawyer, grammarian, and lexicographer. He also writes on jurisprudence (and occasionally golf). He is the author of over 25 books, the best-known of which are Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed. 2016) and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012—coauthored with Justice Antonin Scalia), as well as four unabridged editions of Black’s Law Dictionary. He serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University. He also teaches from time to time at the University of Texas School of Law, Texas A&M School of Law, and Texas Tech School of Law.
In 2009, he was named Legal-Writing and Reference-Book Author of the Decade at a Burton Awards ceremony at the Library of Congress. He has received many other awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Book Award, the Scribes Book Award, the Bernie Siegan Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Plain Language.
His work has played a central role in our understanding of modern judging, advocacy, grammar, English usage, legal lexicography, and the common-law system of precedent. His books are frequently cited by American courts of all levels, including the United States Supreme Court.
His friendship with the novelist David Foster Wallace is memorialized in Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace and Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing (2013). His friendship and writing partnership with Justice Antonin Scalia is depicted in the memoir Nino and Me: My Unusual Friendship with Justice Antonin Scalia (2018).
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Antonin Scalia
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4.8 out of 5

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E. B. Khan

Halfway through and amazing

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2023

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This book is a one stop shop for statutory and private document interpretation. Litigators and paralegals should read this. It will be in hand for all my briefs now

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023

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ANYONE WANTING TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE WAY IN WHICH LAW IS WRITTEN AND INTERPRETED WILL ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BOOK.

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A Guidice

A Must Read for Serious Lawyers - Serious Lawyers, not Egg-Sucking, Bottom-Feeding, Hallway Trash.

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2012

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To be the very best attorneys we can be, we must study. Don't ever hire a lawyer who has never read a case - without being paid to read it - since law school. Right? Thus, for attorneys committed to their professions, this book is essential.

I think my colleagues who dislike Scalia don't like his manner - his aloof, imperious, wheezy, almighty law-professor aura. We all remember that from law school and we detest it. Right? The real criticism isn't his devotion to textualism, it's our natural dislike for inflexible, close-minded people. Scalia is certainly that. (God help me if I ever appear before him...).

But the book is compelling. The Canons of statutory interpretation section is very useful, and very handy for legal subjects where statutes are bandied about constantly, and at every level (as they are with immigration law, for example). This section is where Garner's hand is most discernible, discussions of English usage are clear, bright, and rich with possibilities. And Garner's writing is a pleasure to read: as smooth and rich as oil. This is what you buy the book for.

Scalia is most prominent in the very lengthy introduction, with it's dogmatic insistence on textualist sensibilities. It's almost offensive. We feel almost as though we're being scolded from the bench, yes? Scalia is really answering his critics here much more than he is trying to enlighten the reader.

I'd be willing to bet that Garner strongly advised a heavy edit in the introduction, maybe to half the length, but was unsuccessful. And Scalia doesn't really write all that well either... it's not an elegant style. Reading Scalia is like trying to land a golf ball on a boulder-strewn fairway: uncomfortable, and downright trying at times. Many lawyers and judges find the "content" of his opinion (and other) writing objectionable, but I feel it'd be much easier to swallow if the "form" of the writing weren't so ponderous, and almost oppressive at times...

But the Canons of Construction section will stand you in good stead when you're writing briefs and memos. Buy the book, read half the introduction, then read the Canons section. Keep it close at hand when you're writing. It's good background, good fortification for serious, scholarly attorneys. (People Magazine will suffice for the rest of you...)

The book probably would have been better if Garner had written it alone, but it's still very much worth having. Even Scalia haters will like the book (c'mon, huh? The guy is from Trenton, after all...).

26 people found this helpful

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Truth • Justice • Faith §

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2016

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(RIP) Honorable Scalia.......... It will always be a pleasure to read your work Sir. There are those who could learn from your lawful and ethical instruction. Your writings and cerebral knowledge and experience are some of the most pivotal work. Factually speaking, there are those who refuse to honor civil rules of procedure and decades of settled law. There is a judge I witnessed who set a purge amount without weighing in or reviewing financial evidence. Instead, voiced in open court proceedings his decision was based on the occupational title status without again reviewing available financials. And who completely disregarded and violated Constitutional law on all fronts. Who committed repeated errors of law after counsel repeatedly cited clear and necessary law to be applied in a case. Drafted a consent order missing essential terms and forces down a litigant's and counsels throat without legal basis. Holds trial without legal authority and subject matter jurisdiction and does so after both parties confirmed in formal writings to the court that the case was "moot" and had been moot for months. This judge and opposing counsel suddenly decided to "unmoot" a "moot" case at the last minute. Adverse party chose to unlawfully maintain a frivolous lawsuit for months even after case was declared moot. Adverse party files a declaratory judgement action with no breach identified. They admit this in their own pleadings yet this judge allows this case to progress without legal basis. Adverse party attempts to get the court to rewrite contractual language that a court cannot and nor should do as verbally stated by counsel in a summary judgement hearing. Yet, judge presiding allowed case to progress forward with bad faith conduct riddled throughout. Finally, he threatens counsel in chambers that his client must settle after admitting he knew a contract was "unenforceable" but would enforce based on who he believed instead of law, evidence, and fact finding.

Worth mentioning as this egregious conduct is something Honorable Scalia would have NEVER tolerated. The above mentioned is only a drop in the vast ocean comprised of unlawful conduct in this ongoing merit-less case. The upcoming publication will reveal all aspects including thousands of cited legal documents confirming the aforementioned. You know who you are, and only a low class person would behave so unconstitutionally to achieve a behaviorally corrupt agenda.

2 people found this helpful

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Leo Paws

Not Left or Right. Just much fun with language.

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2022

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Not Left or Right. Just much fun with language. Charmingly written. Intelligence and experience shine on every page. An interesting essay on history, complexity, and practice of interpreting what legislators (and authors of contracts) would have us live by. Well intended but often surprisingly obscure, obtuse, inconsistent, even sloppy. This is followed by seventy 2-3 page discussions of specific canons of interpretation. Each discussion includes history, examples, logic, practical significance, and plenty of reasons to laugh at what we have created. Crazy as our legal system seems, and perhaps not the only good solution, but what an amazing solution to the problem of trying to implement predictability and fairness in human affairs.

3 people found this helpful

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bebe_jon

Great condition

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2022

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I've not read the book yet, so I can't speak to that. But the seller was amazing. Quick shipment and the book is in even better condition than I expected it to be. Crisp pages. Intact spine. Looks like the book has honestly never even been opened before. Amazing condition for a used book.

One person found this helpful

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Tip of the Iceberg

An Unrelenting Dismantling of Consequentialism

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2016

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If had not been clear before, the final line of the book will leave the reader in no doubt that the argument throughout 'Reading Law', more than for originalism or textualism, is for democracy itself.

Out of the dry matter of judicial interpretation, Scalia and Garner make an elegant case for judicial restraint as one of the bedrocks of American democracy. The authors codify canons of statutory interpretation that have enjoyed storeyed use, predominantly borrowing from Anglo-American jurisprudence. In a subsequent section, they deal with a variety of false notions and half-truths, reserving particularly withering scorn for legislative intent. (Which legislative intent? Of one congressman? Or lobbyist? And at which point in the legislative process? And why should the voice of one be allowed to rule the democractic will of the assembly as reflected in the words of the statute?)

The authors' case is that judicial respect for the statutes issuing from democratic assemblies is respect for the democratic process itself. It is clear throughout the work that the authors view the beginning of judicial activism as the end of democratic oversight and control. Scalia and Garner write respectively from a social conservative and socially liberal perspective, in favour of originalist and textualist interpretative approaches, and it is greatly to be regretted that these approaches are often crudely described as conservative, as though liberalism and the soundest interpretations of the democratic will were contradictory. To be a liberal textualist or liberal originalist is no more contradictory than to be a conservative consequentialist.

There is a poignancy too in reading the text: how greatly it is to be regretted that one American's finest jurists was taken from us in - judging by this work - his intellectual prime.

One person found this helpful

Kelvin LEE

A must read for law students and lawyers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

A good book which summarised principles in relation to interpreting statutory provisions in common law in simple language with examples. I guess many have come across Bennion but this one is much easier to understand. I have the great honour to hear Justice Scalia and Professor Garner to speak on the book in Hong Kong shortly before Justice Scalia passed away...

Customer

A book for all Lawyers

Reviewed in India on October 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

Must for library

Mark Pummell

useful and original...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2015

Verified Purchase

for me a very useful and original text; fresh insights and classificatory models that i've found very useful in these early days of my LLB studies...

Amazon Customer

but a brilliant piece of scholarship nonetheless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2014

Verified Purchase

Controversial (because Justice Scalia is one of the authors), but a brilliant piece of scholarship nonetheless.

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