| Summary: | This paper explores the relationship between dictionaries as sources for "authoritative" meanng and the impact of such authority on contemporary legal decisions. One aspect of this relationship is the role of the "proscriptive" as opposed to "descriptive" dictionary, especially as the former attempts to fix current allowable usage and the latter provides meanings that reflect various historical moments. The paper thus builds on the work of Kevin Werbach on the connections between conservative US Supreme Court decisions and historical meanings in older dictionaries. A similar project for UK jurisdictions will yield valuable information on the use of dictionaries. For example, in a 1982 case, the Law Lords determined whether Sikhs were a protected group under the 1976 Race Relations Act, which involved research into the meaning of the word <em>race</em>, and its overlap with <em>ethnic</em>. Lord Fraser of Tullybelto at first commented that the definition of <em>ethnic</em> in the OED edition of 1897 could not fall under the 1976 reference to race, but by following the changing definitions in later editions of OED, including the 1972 Supplement, he could argue that "[t]he value of the 1972 definition is ... that it shows that ethnic has come to be commonly used in a sense appreciably wider than the strictly racial or biological" and that "[the appellant] is a member of the Sikh community which qualifies as a racial group for the purposes of the Act." Thus, the various editions of the OED determined whether Sikhs were covered by the 1976 Act. With current online searchable databases, it is now possible to chart almost every recent occasion when UK courts have used dictionaries to reach legal decisions, and this paper provides an overview of this procedure.
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