Econ_June_09

74 Books and arts

The Economist

June 9th 2018

HAT does it mean to “bear arms”?

The Second Amendment to Ameri-

ca’s constitution reads: “A well regulated

Militia, being necessary to the security of

a free State, the right of the people to keep

and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Concerned by the number of firearms in

America, and the epidemic of gun vio-

lence they cause, many commentators

(including Johnson) have in the past ex-

amined the first halfofthe amendment. It

seems obvious to some that the first

clause qualifies the second: the right to

bear arms is tied tomilitia service.

But gun-rights advocates think the sec-

ond clause stands alone. Among them

was the late Antonin Scalia, who in 2008

wrote a Supreme Court opinion,

Heller,

holding that the amendment guar-

antees an individual right to guns, no mi-

litia service required. He went on to ex-

plain “bear arms”. For him, “to bear” was

simple enough, meaning “to carry”. And

“arms” were just weapons. He conceded

that there was an idiom, “to bear arms”,

which meant to belong to an organised

military force. But thiswas onlya possible

import ofthe phrase, not its coremeaning.

Scalia was an originalist—ie, he be-

lieved the constitution must be interpret-

ed in the light ofthemeaningofits constit-

uent words in the late 18th century. He

bolstered his argument by citing an edi-

tion of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary from

1773, plus selected prose from the period

inwhich the constitutionwaswritten.

Hewasmistaken. Selective quotations

can prove anything, if you have clever re-

searchers looking for them. But there is a

far more robust way to find out what peo-

ple meant by this or that word in the 18th

century. That is to gather a large number

of texts into a “corpus”, a searchable body

of material, and then look for patterns in

thousands of uses of a word or phrase. A

corpus can be general, like Google Books,

which has around 500bnwords of English

text. But it can also be specialised. Two

newcomers are the Corpus of Founding

Era American English, with 139m words

across 95,000documents from1760 to1799,

and the Corpus of Early Modern English,

with1.3bnwords from1475 to1800.

Dennis Baron, a linguist at the Universi-

tyofIllinoisUrbana-Champaign, searched

for “bear arms” in these databases, and

found about 1,500 instances. Of these, he

says, only a handful did not refer to organ-

ised armed action. It is true that several

state constitutions guaranteed the right to

“bear arms” and explicitlymentioned self-

defence. So Mr Baron’s digging does not

completely close the case. But it has shown

that the default meaning of “bear arms” in

the founding erawas, indeed, military.

This research ought to prompt the jus-

tices to revisit

Heller—

though given the

weight of precedent and the court’s

make-up, that is unlikely. Still, the dispute

has several other interesting lessons. One

is that phrases are more than the sum of

their dictionary definitions. Context isn’t

just helpful; it is often crucial. The verb

“bear” has 44 definitions in the Oxford

English Dictionary (

OED

), not counting

the ursine noun. Which “bear” is meant

canonlybe grasped in context. Bearing in-

terest does not mean literally carrying in-

terest around, nor does bearing a grudge

involve physical activity.

Second, there are phrases, sometimes

called “phrasal verbs”, that cannot be un-

derstood by knowing the component

words: consider

bear down

bear up

Good dictionaries define these phrases

separately. The

OED

defines “bear arms”

in an entry under “arms”: “To serve as a

soldier; to fight (for a country, cause, etc).”

But it also takes note of the contested

meaning in America’s constitution.

In any event, real-world usage matters

more than dictionaries. Judges often hunt

through dictionaries to support their rul-

ings, but these can miss nuances or make

mistakes. Instead judges should go di-

rectly to digital corpora. Nor are selected

quotes enough. In any other field, this

would be called cherry-picking. Instead,

with the powerful, free resources now

available, anyone—including readers of

this column—can look at a huge body of

usages and draw firmer conclusions

about meaning. (Neal Goldfarb, a lawyer,

has made the “bear arms” data available

on Language Log, a blog.)

Originalists like Scalia can find out

what words really meant in the 18th cen-

tury. But their opponents—who believe

laws should evolve with the meanings of

the underlying concepts—get a powerful

tool, too. Lexicographers have revolution-

ised their work using such data. Time for

lawyers to do the same.

Arms and the man

Johnson

Big data can illuminate legal controversies—including over the SecondAmendment

nor, sailed for England. Delays caused by

war, storms and other catastrophes meant

it was three years before he was able to

make it back. By then, the colony—which

included his granddaughter, Virginia Dare,

the first English child born inNorth Ameri-

ca, according to legend—had vanished,

leavingonlya fewtantalising clues behind.

Thus begins the secondpart ofthis saga:

the fruitless search for answers—and the

strange form of madness that seems to

overcome anyonewho gets too close to the

subject. “The Lost Colony has a kind of in-

exorable pull, like a blackhole,” a research-

er tells Mr Lawler. But if the hunt itself is a

matter of “chasing ghosts”, Mr Lawler is on

firmer ground in his effort to explain its

hold on the American imagination. Above

all, the legend of the Lost Colony fulfils the

need for an origin story, one that is all the

more powerful for its pathos.

Still, it is an origin story of an exclusion-

ary, even racist, cast. Given the devastation

wrought on native populations, the obses-

sive focus on a handful ofAnglo-Saxon set-

tlers—including, most poignantly, the in-

fant Virginia—is overblown. The notion

that America began here, in the bogs and

shifting sands of Roanoke Island, provides

a distinctly Waspy pedigree for a nation

with a farmore complicated heritage.

Mr Lawler is an intrepid guide to this

treacherous territory. When he attempts to

track down one of the most controversial

artefacts associated with the Lost Colony,

he confesses: “No scholar in his right mind

would risk his reputation on the Dare

Stone, which by nowwas academically ra-

dioactive. Fortunately, I was no scholar.”

This can-do spirit serves himwell. Hiswill-

ingness to chase down every lead, no mat-

terhowoutlandish, andhis enthusiasmfor

the journey as much as the destination,

make “The Secret Token” a lively and en-

gaging read.