Law teachers who have to keep first year students amused will be delighted with Fischer v United States USSC 23-5572 (28 June 2024).
We all know the old maxims of statutory interpretation, noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis. They seem to answer the question of what a general expression means when it follows a list of specifics. They both suggest that the general expression should have its meaning coloured, or focused, by the specifics.
The example in Fischer is this piece of legislation, 18 U.S.C. 1512(c):
“(c) Whoever corruptly—
“(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record,
document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the
intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for
use in an official proceeding; or
“(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any
official proceeding, or attempts to do so,
“shall be fined . . . or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
Does the word “otherwise” mean in ways like those specified in (1), or is it more general?
Whether the maxims apply depends, as this case illustrates, on the purpose or purposes of the legislator, the structure of the enactment and the context of the section, the need to avoid redundancy, the more general consequences of a proposed interpretation, and the courts’ approach to similar legislation. Indeed, the maxims seem to be, at least in this case, more useful as a description of the result of interpretation than as a guide to what interpretation should be applied.
The Court in Fischer was divided. Roberts CJ, delivering the opinion of the Court, put its conclusion in this way:
“ … subsection (c)(1) refers to a defined set of offense conduct—four types of actions that, by their nature, impair the integrity or availability of records, documents, or objects for use in an official proceeding. When the phrase “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding” is read as having been given more precise content by that narrower list of conduct, subsection (c)(2) makes it a crime to impair the availability or integrity of records, documents, or objects used in an official proceeding in ways other than those specified in (c)(1).”
The dissenters, Barrett J, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan JJ, found the canons of interpretation a poor fit, (“like using a hammer to pound in a screw”), noting the division of the section into separate paragraphs, having different verbs and different objects, making them independent and with different mens rea requirements. They therefore construed the word “otherwise” broadly, whereas the majority held that it gave the general phrase a more specific meaning.
The Chief Justice managed to work in the word “pumpfake”.
