Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-511_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

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FACEBOOK, INC. v. DUGUID 

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

to evaluate these canons by conducting what is called a cor-
pus linguistics analysis, that is, an analysis of how particu-
lar  combinations  of  words  are  used  in  a  vast  database  of 
English prose.  See generally Lee & Mouritsen, Judging Or-
dinary  Meaning,  127  Yale  L. J.  788  (2018).    If  the  series-
qualifier  canon  were  analyzed  in  this  way,  I  suspect  we 
would find that series qualifiers sometimes modify all the 
nouns or verbs in a list and sometimes modify just the last
noun or verb.  It would be interesting to see if the percent-
age of sentences in the first category is high enough to jus-
tify the canon.  But no matter how the sentences with the 
relevant structure broke down, it would be surprising if “the 
sense of the matter” did not readily reveal the meaning in 
the great majority of cases.  Reading Law 150. 

That is just my guess.  Empirical evidence might prove 
me  wrong,  but  that  is  not  what  matters.    The  important
point is that interpretive canons attempt to identify the way
in which “a reasonable reader, fully competent in the lan-
guage, would have understood the text at the time it was 
issued.”  Id., at 33.  To the extent that interpretive canons
accurately describe how the English language is generally 
used, they are useful tools.  But they are not inflexible rules.
Appellate  judges  spend  virtually  every  working  hour 
speaking,  listening  to,  reading,  or  writing  English  prose. 
Statutes are written in English prose, and interpretation is 
not a technical exercise to be carried out by mechanically 
applying a set of arcane rules.  Canons of interpretation can
help in figuring out the meaning of troublesome statutory 
language, but if they are treated like rigid rules, they can
lead us astray.  When this Court describes canons as rules 
or  quotes  canons  while  omitting  their  caveats  and  limita-
tions, we only encourage the lower courts to relegate statu-
tory interpretation to a series of if-then computations.  No 
reasonable reader interprets texts that way.

For these reasons, I respectfully concur in the judgment.