Corpus Linguistics Criticisms of Heller Misuse Corpus Linguistics

Abstract

A number of linguistics experts have asserted that new corpus-linguistics evidence undermines the U.S. Supreme Court’s conclusion in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment phrase keep and bear arms means to possess and carry weapons. At the time of ratification, the term bear arms carried both an idiomatic sense meaning “to serve as a soldier” and a literal sense meaning “to carry weapons.” The Heller majority concluded that the Second Amendment uses the literal sense, partly because the idiomatic reading has the absurd implication of causing the Amendment to protect a right to serve as a soldier. Perhaps because of that absurd implication, the Heller dissent did not adopt an idiomatic reading either. In recent years, however, several commentators have concluded from corpus data that bear arms was used more often in the idiomatic military sense than the literal sense at the time of ratification, and have argued that this undermines the Heller majority’s interpretation.