The Volokh Conspiracy

Either the judges on that court have never played Boggle, or they failed to [sic] "Boogle."

Not just sentence structure, but typography and formatting, can be significant! See, e.g., Broad v. Rockwell Int'l Corp., 642 F.2d 929, 954-55 &n.24 (5th Cir.)(en banc), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 965 (1981):

Broad and the defendants have argued vigorously the question whether the last phrase in clause (e) of Section 13.01 modifies the entire section, or only clause (e). We agree with the defendants that under the most logical reading of Section 13.01, the phrase “provided that such action shall not adversely affect the interests of the holders of any of the Debentures” logically modifies only clause (e)....

The appended footnote reads (ellipsis by the Fifth Circuit):

Clause (e) is as close to being an “open-ended” provision as anything in the Indenture; it would only make sense to limit the broad grant of the power to “make such provisions ... as may be necessary or desirable” to those situations in which the interests of the holders of Debentures would not be adversely affected, lest the issuer's and Trustee's rights become so vague and unlimited as to render the entire contract unenforceable. The fact that this phrase is appended to the end of clause (e), rather than being set out after clauses (a) through (e) on a separate line beginning at the left margin, is also indicative of an intent that the phrase modify only clause (e). Further, elsewhere in the document, where the context clearly indicates that modifying phrases are intended to apply to several sequentially numbered clauses, those phrases are set out on separate line which begins at the left margin, or in introductory segments that precede all of the numbered clauses.

This is exactly the sort of detail that big-firm corporate securities associates were supposed to obsess over, and consistently get right, during their marathon sessions back in olden days "at the printer" before major documents like an indenture for publicly traded convertible debentures was released. And it may be worth noting that the judge who authored this 24/1 opinion for the en banc Fifth Circuit, Hon. Carolyn King (then "Randall," with a previous married name), was a corporate securities lawyer before being named to the bench.

Wouldn't everything be much clearer if the court required Congress to diagram their own sentences?

Why is the D.C. circuit using this ridiculous sort of diagram, and not a proper tree diagram, as has been universal in serious linguistics for three or four decades?

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