: re: In Overturning Conviction, Supreme Court Says Fish Are Not Always Tangible

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 10:37 AM
Subject: re: In Overturning Conviction, Supreme Court Says Fish Are Not Always Tangible
To: "letters@nytimes.com"


To the Editor:
   The Sarbanes-Oxley statute  of 2002 may indeed be "too broad" as
justice Kagan opines. It may even be so vague as to be
unconstitutional. But to find as this court did that a fish is not a
"tangible object" is to gut language of meaning. It is to say that no
law can mean anything.
   A lawyer's world--like a republic--is built of words. If this court
is to play Humpty Dumpty, declaring that “[w]hen I use a word, it
means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." then it
has ceased to interpret the laws enacted by Congress. It has declared
itself the master. And like Humpty Dumpty, the damage may be
irreparable.
Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/us/justices-overturn-a-fishermans-conviction-for-tossing-undersize-catch.html?_r=0