Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-511_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 17

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FACEBOOK, INC. v. DUGUID 

ALITO, J., concurring
ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

Interpretation of Legal Texts 147 (2012) (Reading Law)).*

The Court refers to this canon as a “rul[e] of grammar.” 
Ante,  at  5.  Yet  the  Scalia-Garner  treatise  makes  it  clear 
that interpretive canons “are not ‘rules’ of interpretation in
any  strict  sense  but  presumptions  about  what  an  intelli-
gently  produced  text  conveys.”    Reading  Law  51.  (Even
grammar, according to Mr. Garner, is ordinarily just “an at-
tempt  to  describe  the  English  language  as  it  is  actually 
used.”  B. Garner, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage,
and Punctuation 1 (2016)).  And Reading Law goes out of 
its way to emphasize the limitations of the series-qualifier 
canon, warning: 

“Perhaps  more  than  most  of  the  other  canons,  [the
series-qualifier  canon]  is  highly  sensitive  to  context.
Often the sense of the matter prevails: He  went forth 
and wept bitterly does not suggest that he went forth 
bitterly.”  Reading Law 150. 

The italicized sentence—an English translation of a sen-
tence  in  the  New  Testament,  Matthew  26:75—is  not  only 
grammatical; it is perfectly clear.  No one familiar with the 
English language would fail to understand it—even though
its meaning is contrary to the one suggested by the series-
qualifier canon. 

The Court writes that the series-qualifier canon “gener-
ally reflects the most natural reading of a sentence,” ante, 
at 5, and maybe that is so.  But cf. Lockhart v. United States, 
577  U. S.  347,  351  (2016)  (relying  on  “the  basic  intuition 
that when a modifier appears at the end of a list, it is easier 
to apply that modifier only to the item directly before it”). 

—————— 

*As set out in Reading Law 147, this canon also applies when the mod-

ifier precedes the series of verbs or nouns. 

Some scholars have claimed that “nobody proposed [the series-quali-
fier] canon until Justice Scalia pioneered it” in Reading Law.  Baude & 
Sachs, The Law of Interpretation, 130 Harv. L. Rev. 1079, 1125 (2017)
(internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis deleted).