Judge Rudofsky Talks Corpus Linguistics

Arkansas federal district judge Lee Rudofsky joins Sarah and David to give a guided tour ...

By and

Arkansas federal district judge Lee Rudofsky joins Sarah and David to give a guided tour of corpus linguistics, a recent but fascinating tool for jurists. How do corpus linguistics help define constitutional concepts and definitions? Plus, our hosts pick apart an article about the possible leaker of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health opinion.

Show Notes:

–Wilson v. Safelite

–New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
By and
Comments (81)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. M. Adrian Canadiensis

    Catching up on episodes I missed during summer holidays*, it was the overwhelming need to agree publicly with Sarah that Billy Budd is the WORST that made me finally stop being a freeloading freelister. So, if Jonah wants to know how to drive membership, may I humbly suggest taking a strong, public anti-Melville position?

    *I am 87.15% sure this is the right episode, but having failed to write it down at the time (now a few weeks ago) and having failed to find "Billy Budd is the worst" in the show notes, I am having to rely on educated comment-skimming.

    Collapse
  2. Will

    I'm curious as to how corpus linguistics addresses and handles the potential for bias in the corpus. You have the unavoidable bias of only being able to review surviving texts, but you also have the potentially more concerning bias of whoever curated the corpus in the first place. If your corpus isn't a random selection of all contemporary writings, how confident can you be in your conclusions? And that curation bias doesn't have to be nefarious.

    It may still be better that looking up the word in a contemporary dictionary, but I'd be interested in hearing more about how the body of work that is reviewed is selected.

    Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Sarah’s high school is very close to what my ideal one would look like except that all students would be required to read Billy Budd and Moby Dick (and Huck Finn and a few others) and there would be no statistics (math that is lying about being math).

    Collapse
  4. Garrett Heckman

    I thought this was great. I majored in Linguistics (it has remained a hobby since then), and I think it's really helped me as an attorney.

    The tabs on my browser got a little intense after this pod. It's a mess, but I'm determined to bring myself up to speed on this. It's not hard to see practical applications (for those who know how to do it) outside of constitutional law as well (real estate especially deeds, trust and estate administration, contracts, etc.).

    Collapse
    1. Garrett Heckman

      Oh and Rude Boys/Rude Girls should definitely win. Anyone who listened to ska in the 90s and earlier must agree. I have spoken.

      Collapse
  5. Sean Massey

    Great conversation with Judge Rudofsky. As someone who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas it is so nice to hear someone thoughtful and intelligent from this state.

    We are not all Trump people I promise. LOL

    Collapse
  6. Avatar photo
    Marc Frischhertz

    David and Sarah, please talk about Justice Alito’s speech on Dobbs on your next AO pod.

    Collapse
  7. Mike

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rude_boy

    Collapse
  8. Avatar photo
    Eric

    I’m a textualist so for me “bear arms” means the upper appendages of mammals in the ursidae family.

    Collapse
  9. Avatar photo
    Chad Kirvan

    Rudofsky’s Red-nosed Reindeer? (Or Law Clerks…I just hate to lose the alliteration)

    Collapse
  10. Alan C

    I was gonna suggest Rudolfsky’s Reindeer but I see there is no L

    Collapse
Load More