Court Opinion

ID: 9583713
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:41:27.849853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:45.475369
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, CHIEF JUSTICE
¶ 34. (concurring). I join the court in its mandate. I write separately to express my disagreement with the majority opinion's reliance on the plain meaning canon to interpret Wis. Stat. § 939.31.
*508¶ 35. In determining the legislative intent, the majority opinion looks solely to the text of the statute. Discussing whether the word "whoever" is singular or plural, the majority bases its decision that the statute embraces the unilateral approach to conspiracy on the statute's use of pronouns and verb conjugations. Pronouns are a natural source of uncertainty in statutory interpretation because they have little inherent meaning and do not contain enough information on their own to name the person(s) to whom they are intended to refer. See Lawrence M. Solan, The Language of Judges 38,121 (1993).
¶ 36. In using dictionary meanings and rules of grammar, the majority dons thick grammarian spectacles and fails to see other available evidence bearing on the meaning of the statute.1 In this case the 1950 and 1953 Wisconsin Legislative Council reports provide a rich discussion on the revisions to the conspiracy statute, a discussion which is omitted by the majority opinion.
¶ 37. The majority's approach has been criticized by scholars and courts, including the United States Supreme Court in Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, Inc., 426 U.S. 1 (1976). The Train Court refused to rely exclusively on the plain language of a statute: "When aid to construction of the meaning of words, as used in the statute, is available, there certainly can be no 'rule of law' which forbids its use, however clean the words may appear on 'superficial examination.'" Id. at 10 (quoting United States v. *509American Trucking Ass'ns, 310 U.S. 534, 543-44 (1940)).
¶ 38. Furthermore, in resolving the meaning of the statute, the court should consider the public policy reasons that support either a unilateral or a bilateral approach to conspiracy. Justification for the unilateral approach is explained in the Model Penal Code as follows: "Under the unilateral approach of the [Model Penal] Code, the culpable party's guilt would not be affected by the fact that the other party's agreement was feigned... .[H]is culpability is not decreased by the other's secret intention."2
¶ 39. Public policy also supports the bilateral approach to conspiracy. One court explained the rationale for the bilateral rule as follows:
The rationale behind making conspiracy a crime also supports [the bilateral] rule. Criminal conspiracy is an offense separate from the actual criminal act because of the perception "that collective action toward an antisocial end involves a greater risk to society than individual action toward the same end." In part, this view is based on the perception that group activity increases the likelihood of success of the criminal act and of future criminal activity by members of the group, and is difficult for law enforcement officers to detect. . . . Such dangers, however, are nonexistent when a person "conspires" only with a government agent.
United States v. Escobar de Bright, 742 F.2d 1196, 1199 (9th Cir. 1984) (emphasis added) (citations omitted).
*510¶40. I would interpret Wis. Stat. §939.31. by considering the statutory language, the legislative history, the prior cases, the legislative purpose and the conspiracy statute in the context of the criminal code. Several scholars have proposed methods of statutory interpretation that take into account the text and various extrinsic aids.3 By using this approach to statutory interpretation, judges can acknowledge and deal with interpretive problems that arise from the inherent ambiguity of language as well as the limits of our linguistic capabilities. See Solan at 117.
¶ 41. For the foregoing reasons, I join the court's mandate and write separately.
¶ 42. I am authorized to state that Justice William A. Bablitch joins this concurrence.

 West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U.S. 83, 113 (1991) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (criticizing the majority opinion for putting on "its thick grammarian's spectacles and ignor[ing] the available evidence of congressional purpose and the teaching of prior cases construing a statute").

 Model Penal Code and Commentaries, Part I § 5.03, at 400 (1985).

See, e.g., Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (1986) (focusing on the entire history of a statute and how it fits into the current legislative scheme); Richard A. Posner, The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990) (placing weight on the pre-enactment history of a statute); William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Philip P. Frickey, Statutory Interpretation as Practical Reasoning, 42 Stan. L. Rev. 321 (1990) (urging consideration of a broad range of textual, historical and evolutive evidence in interpreting statutes).