MURAL - Maynooth University Research Archive Library



    A Fragment on Shall and May


    Tillman, Seth Barrett and Tillman, Nora (2010) A Fragment on Shall and May. American Journal of Legal History, 50. p. 453. ISSN 0002-9319

    [img] Download (492kB)


    Share your research

    Twitter Facebook LinkedIn GooglePlus Email more...



    Add this article to your Mendeley library


    Abstract

    This short paper has some comments on the Constitution's use of the verbs "shall" and "may" (and "will"). We suggest that the American English of the founding generation was a more capacious language than its modern successor and that which came into being post-Noah Webster's first dictionary and grade school primer, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, first published in 1783. As we explain more fully, where a word once had multiple meanings, but only one variant is now remembered and understood, we may be seriously mistaken when we ascribe near certainty to our understanding of how a constitutional term was used

    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: shall; may; will; Constitution; Anglo-English; American-English; Madison;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Social Sciences > Law
    Item ID: 2896
    Depositing User: Seth Tillman
    Date Deposited: 15 Dec 2011 12:15
    Journal or Publication Title: American Journal of Legal History
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
      Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

      Repository Staff Only(login required)

      View Item Item control page

      Downloads

      Downloads per month over past year

      Origin of downloads