Supreme Court Decision Today Decided On Grammar; Could Be A Look Ahead At Heller

A hint at what is coming with District of Columbia v. Heller?

The Legal Times is reporting this afternoon that a case involving the Federal Bureau of Prisons came down to grammar in the interpretation of the statute at issue.

"For an amazing 14 pages in the majority by Justice Clarence Thomas and 21 pages of dissents by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, justices debated whether, grammatically or by other rules of statutory construction, the final phrase "or any other law enforcement officer" can include prison officers, or relates only to those involved in customs or excise disputes."

Read the full analysis here, and what it might mean for the looming landmark Second Amendment case.

In their dissent of the prisons case, Kennedy argues that the comma in the middle of the text at issue does not divorce the clause that follows from what went before (and therefore, the exemption only applies to customs officers.) As Legal Times notes, that's an issue in the Second Amendment case as well, where the debate is whether the right to "keep and bear arms" is pertains only to a preceding phrase that refers to a "well-regulated militia."

From the story: "So does that mean that based on his reasoning today, Kennedy (and Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Breyer, who joined him) will support the view that the Second Amendment only protects a militia right rather than an individual right? Almost as if he anticipates that question, Kennedy cautions that the majority view is "not without grammatical support."

Breyer's separate dissent focuses on the word "any" in the statute, and he offers an amusing illustration for his point that "any" is not a universal word, but has context. Breyer writes, "When I call out to my wife, 'There isn’t any butter,' I do not mean, 'There isn’t any butter in town.' The context maks clear to her that I am talking about the contents of our refrigerator."

Adds the Legal Times in its own humorous observation: "In the real world, of course, many spouses would give a third meaning to Breyer's proclamation: "The butter is staring me in the face, but because I am a man, I can't find it."

Ouch!