Legislative Intent and Ordinary Meaning

We hope everyone is having a nice fall. In this first newsletter update, we are proud to share what the Legislative Intent and Ordinary Meaning project on law and language at Western Law has been up to lately.

Upcoming talk

On November 13, 2025, we are delighted to be hosting Professor Luciana Moro (Deakin Law). She will be discussing the often-neglected role that principles of statutory interpretation play in the formation of legislative intention, including how judicial principles actively shape the process of legislative drafting and deliberation. The talk will be hybrid at 12:30 pm EST, and you can register for Zoom access here.

Past talks

Recently, we hosted Ross Pey (Western), who is a PhD candidate at the law school. His talk was entitled “Issues with Bilingual Legislation and Potential Solutions for Bilingual Welsh Legislation”. Ross discussed two issues: (1) the general approach to interpreting bilateral interpretation, and (2) the typical problems associated with resolving discrepancies in two or more texts of different languages. The talk raised interesting issues of multiculturalism, postcolonialism, the “narrow reader problem”, and statutory interpretation, and it considered these issues in the context of the Acts of the Senedd in Wales. Ross’s talk raised thoughtful questions from the in-person and online audience alike, joined by Western community members, Canadian and international academics, and judges.

Last year (2024–25), we hosted four talks:

• Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini (Rutgers), “Commissioned Voices: Rethinking Authorship in Algorithmic Speech”
  • This talk critiqued Peter Salib’s argument against the claim that algorithmically generated text is the speech of the designer of the system that produced it.
• Kevin Tobia (Georgetown), “Reading Law with Linguistics: The Statutory Interpretation of Artifact Nouns”
  • This talk argued that courts interpreting statutes that involve “artifact nouns” should supplement traditional textualist tools with insights from linguistics and language data.
• Jacques Lamarche (Western), “A Grammar that is Logic and Formal, but is not Formal Semantics nor Generative Grammar”
  • This talk argued that the function of grammar in the Logic of Labeling of Lamarche is simplified compared to its traditional function in formal theory of language. 
• Elizabeth Allyn Smith (UQAM), “From Forensic Linguistics to AI: the Consequences of Different Understandings of ‘Ground Truth’ for the Courts”
  • This talk traced how the concept of “ground truth” has evolved across fields, highlighting the differences between uses in forensic linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Blog posts

We have also shared some blog posts about the study of law and language:

• Mark Mancini (TRU), Telus v FCM and “Starting With The Text”
  • Mark Mancini uses Telus Communications Inc v Federation of Canadian Municipalities, 2025 SCC 15 to show how the Supreme Court, in “starting with the text”, uses text as an “anchor” of its interpretation. The conclusion of this argument is that the court’s interpretative approach must start with the text, as it is the text through which Parliament achieves its objectives.
• Andy Yu (Western), What Does it Mean to Say that Statutes are ‘Always Speaking’?
  • Andy Yu introduces and explores the longstanding principle that statutes are “always speaking”. Courts take statutes to be “always speaking” by interpreting statutes given social, scientific, technological and legal changes that occur after the statute’s enactment.
• Lindsay Borrows (Queen’s), Interview with Lindsay Borrows
  • In a captivating interview that Manish Oza conducted with Lindsay Borrows (Chippewas of the Nawash First Nation), she explains her work in the revitalization and interconnectedness of Indigenous languages and law. The discussion explores recent developments in revitalization and proposes ways to improve this work throughout Canada.

Stay tuned for more updates!