Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
This is only a serious or systematic problem if cases are being decided on those grounds, which they shouldn't be. It's a marker of what the Court cares about because neither Sotomayor nor Gorsuch is writing those opinions alone -- they have highly capable law students working for them who are entirely capable of fact-checking things, if their justices want them to do it.
But as a question of statutory interpretation, it doesn't matter whether the number of child fatalities (or whatever it was) is 10K, 100K or a million -- it shouldn't change the answer to the question of what the statute says.
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There is no end to discussion of historical context in statutory interpretation, whether because of some "originalist" approach to understanding the constitution or a desire to understand what was meant when a statute was adopted and language of the statute was written. Half the court and many of their clerks were history majors, but they all really suck at this part of the job. I think it's because of how we train lawyers. Lawyers think of the historical record as a tool for making the arguments that benefit their clients, which is exactly the way you don't want to approach a real understanding of history.
These discussions regularly have an impact on how a court reads a statute.
